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1 



FIRST 



QUARTER CENTENNIAL 



OF 



BOSTON UNIVERSITY 



PROGRAM AND ADDRESSES 



BOSTON, MASS. 
12 SOMERSET STREET 
1898 



LDsi7 

• 7 
i ?f? 



SOURCE UNKNOWN 

DEC 5 1944 



The Riverdale Press : 
C. A. W. Spencer, 
Brookliite, Mass. 



V 

n 



HISTORICAL NOTE, 



Boston University was incorporated by the Legislature of 
Massachusetts in the year 1869, which was forty-seven years 
after the incorporation of Boston as a city, and two hundred 
and thirty-nine years after the original settlement of the town 
in 1630. The first to advocate its establishment was a Massa- 
chusetts senator, the Honorable Lee Claflin. His friend, 
Isaac Rich, a wealthy merchant and real estate owner, by 
making the proposed institution his heir, and heading the 
application for a Charter, took the decisive step that ensured 
the beginning of the enterprise. The Governor, whose name 
was officially appended to the Charter, — his Excellency 
William Claflin, a Doctor of Laws of Harvard University and 
a son of the Honorable Lee Claflin, — was an original mem- 
ber of the Corporation, and since 1872 he has continuously 
served as its President. In this latter office he succeeded the 
Honorable Jacob Sleeper, one of the three original incorpo- 
rators, a member of a former Governor's Council, and for 
twelve years a state-appointed Overseer of Harvard University. 
In accordance with a supplementary enactment by the legis- 
lature of the Commonwealth, the Boston Theological Semi- 
nary was, in the year 1871, transferred to the University and 
made its first department. The following year the School of 
Law was opened, and a College of Music. One year later 
there followed the College of Liberal Arts, a School of 
Oratory, and the School of Medicine. The Graduate School 
of Arts and Sciences, then called the School of All Sciences, 
was also at this time planned. The academic and professional 



iv Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



organization was substantially completed on the thirty-first 
day of March of the same year by the election of William F. 
Warren, who, from 1867 to 1871, had served as Acting 
President of the Boston Theological Seminary, and from 
1 87 1 to 1873 as Dean of the University Faculty of Theology, 
and from 1869 as an original member of the University 
Corporation, — to serve as President of the University. 

In view of the fact that the present year (1897-98) com- 
pleted the first quarter of a century of the operation of the 
University as a completely organized institution, it seemed to 
the Trustees appropriate that at its close there should be 
some fitting commemoration of the beginnings of the work. 
The committee appointed to plan and provide for such com- 
memoration has been gratified at the friendly spirit of 
cooperation manifested by all whose aid has been sought, and 
for the same it hereby returns most hearty thanks. 

The following pages will give a brief summary of the 
events of the Quarter Centennial, the formal addresses, 
and a list of those who on the invitation of the Committee, 
took part in these interesting exercises. 



RESOLUTIONS, 



THE CORPORA TION TO THE PRESIDENT 



Resol VED : — That we, the Trustees of Boston 
University, on its Twenty-fifth Anniversary, express 
our honor and esteem for Rev. William F. Warren, 
S.T.D., LL.D., the beloved President of the University. 

We recognize the notable fact that he is the first 
and only President of the University. Rarely is it 
given to any one to mould the destinies of an institution 
for a quarter of a century, and still more rarely to 
guide and govern in its origin as well. This distinc- 
tion among great educators belongs almost solely to 
Dr. Warren. 

We coiigratulate the University that in these nascent 
years it has had for so long a period the wise and 
liberal counsels of one who has held steadily to the 
highest and most comprehensive ideals. 

We believe that the unprecedented growth in 
numbers, the excellence of the work accomplished and 
the distinction to which already so many of the 
graduates of the institution have attained, is due in no 



vi Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



small measure to the catholic and progressive spirit of 
the man whose modesty of manner might hide him 
from the honors which are his due. 

We order this grateful recognition of his services to 
be inscribed upon our record and to be properly 
engrossed and presented to Dr. Warren. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Historical Note iii 

The Corporation to the President ..... v 

Committee of Arrangements ...... ix 

General Program . x 

Tuesday Evening. 

Unversity Convocation Address ..... i 
By Commissioner William T. Harris, LL.D. 

Wednesday Afternoon. 

Congratulatory Address ....... 19 

By Governor Roger Wolcott, LL.D. 

Congratulatory Address -25 

By Mayor Josiah Quincy. 

Historical Address 29 

By President William F. Warren, S. T. D., LL.D. 

Wednesday Evening. 

Invocation by the Rev. E. Winchester Donald, LL.D. . 51 
Telegram from the Hon. John D. Long, LL.D., Secretary 

of the Navy 53 

Address by the Rev. George A. Gordon, S. T. D. . . 54 

Address by Chief Justice Walbridge A. Field, LL.D. . 57 

Address by the Rev. James M. Buckley, S. T. D., LL.D. 62 

Address by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, S.T.D.,LL.D. 70 

Address by the Rev. Bishop J. F. Hurst, S.T.D., LL.D. 74 

Address by President Charles W. Eliot, LL.D. . . 81 



GENERAL COMMITTEE. 



WILLIAM CLAFLIN, 
Honorary President. 



ALDEN SPEARE, 
Chairman. 

James F. Almy, 
John L. Bates, 
Charles C. Bragdon, 
Joseph H. Chadwick, 
William R. Clark, 
Chester C. Corbin, 
Edward H. Dunn, 
Oliver H. Durrell, 



WILLARD T. PERRIN, 

Secretary. 



FROM THE CORPORATION : 



Sarah A. Emerson, 
Austin B. Fletcher, 
John D. Flint, 
Charles T. Gallagher, 
William I. Haven, 
Richard W. Husted, 
Joshua Merrill, 
Pliny Nickerson, 
Charles Parkhurst, 



Silas Peirce, 
John D. Pickles, 
William W. Potter, 
Sarah E. Sherman, 
George Skene, 
Daniel Steele, 
Edward M. Taylor, 
William F. Warren. 



FROM THE UNIVERSITY COUNCIL: 

Samuel C. Bennett, Marcus D. Buell, William E. Huntington, 

I. Tisdale Talbot. 



Homer Albers, 
Herbert C. Clapp, 
Judson B. Coit, 
Thomas B. Lindsay, 



FROM THE FACULTIES : 
Hinckley G. Mitchell, Charles W. Rishell, 
George K. Morris, John P. Sutherland, 

Marshall Perrin, Joseph R. Taylor, 

Arthur H. Wellman. 



FROM THE UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION : 

Frank E. Allard, John P. Kennedy, Charles Steere, 

John Wenzel. 

The assignment to SPECIAL COMMITTEES was as follows, the first named in 
such case acting as Chairman :— 

i. On Commencement Day Exercises and Speakers : Messrs. Speare, Bates, Dunn, 
Haven, Perrin, Warren. 

2. On arrangements for Convocation Day : Messrs. Warren, Albers, Allard, Clapp, 
Kennedy, Lindsay, Mitchell, Steere, Wenzel. 

3. On Hall, Invitations, Ticket-Distribution, etc. : Messrs. Dunn, Huntington, Husted, 
Nickerson, Warren. 

4. On Entertainment : Messrs. Pickles, Dunn, Merrill, Perrin, Potter, Skene, Taylor. 

5. On Reports for the Press : Messrs. Haven, Bragdon, Parkhurst. 

6. On Stationery, Printing, etc. : Messrs. Husted, Haven, Nickerson. 

7. On Expenses : Messrs. Chadwick, Dunn, Husted, Speare. 

8. On Quarter Centennial Offerings : 

A. From Alumni: Messrs. Haven, Bennett, Emerson, Gallagher, Perrin, Rishell, 
Sherman, Sutherland. 

B. From others than Alumni : Messrs. Almy, Bragdon, Chadwick, Clark, Corbin, 
Dunn, Durrell, Fletcher, Flint, Husted, Merrill, Peirce, Potter, Speare, Steele. 

9. On Resolutions and Quarter Centennial Publications : Messrs. Haven, Bates, Perrin. 



xii Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



QUARTER CENTENNIAL COMMENCEMENT DAY. 

wednesday, june first. 

Business Session of the Corporation at ten a. m. 



AFTERNOON EXERCISES. 

TREMONT TEMPLE, TWO O'CLOCK. 

MUSIC. 

Invocation by the Rev. Timothy Dwight, S.T. D., LL.D., 
President of Yale University. 

Address by the Governor, His Excellency Roger Wolcott, 

LL.D. 
Address by the Mayor, His Honor Josiah Quincy. 
Historical Address by President William F. Warren. 

music. 
Promotion of Candidates for Degrees. 

benediction. 



For the convenience of the specially invited delegates of 
colleges, learned societies, and other organizations, a collation was 
served in Isaac Rich Hall, in Ashburton Place, at half-past six 
o'clock. The Trustees received these guests at the same place at 
six o'clock. 



FIRST 



QUARTER CENTENNIAL 



OF 



BOSTON UNIVERSITY 



PROGRAM AND ADDRESSES 



BOSTON, MASS. 
12 SOMERSET STREET 
1898 



The Riverdale Press : 
C. A. W. Spencer, 
Brooklinjs, Mass. 



HISTORICAL NOTE. 



Boston University was incorporated by the Legislature of 
Massachusetts in the year 1869, which was forty-seven years 
after the incorporation of Boston as a city, and two hundred 
and thirty-nine years after the original settlement of the town 
in 1630. The first to advocate its establishment was a Massa- 
chusetts senator, the Honorable Lee Claflin. His friend, 
Isaac Rich, a wealthy merchant and real estate owner, by 
making the proposed institution his heir, and heading the 
application for a Charter, took the decisive step that ensured 
the beginning of the enterprise. The Governor, whose name 
was officially appended to the Charter, — his Excellency 
William Claflin, a Doctor of Laws of Harvard University and 
a son of the Honorable Lee Claflin, — was an original mem- 
ber of the Corporation, and since 1872 he has continuously 
served as its President. In this latter office he succeeded the 
Honorable Jacob Sleeper, one of the three original incorpo- 
rators, a member of a former Governor's Council, and for 
twelve years a state-appointed Overseer of Harvard University. 
In accordance with a supplementary enactment by the legis- 
lature of the Commonwealth, the Boston Theological Semi- 
nary was, in the year 1871, transferred to the University and 
made its first department. The following year the School of 
Law was opened, and a College of Music. One year later 
there followed the College of Liberal Arts, a School of 
Oratory, and the School of Medicine. The Graduate School 
of Arts and Sciences, then called the School of All Sciences, 
was also at this time planned. The academic and professional 



iv Boston University Quarter Cefitennial. 



organization was substantially completed on the thirty-first 
day of March of the same year by the election of William F. 
Warren, who, from 1867 to 1871, had served as Acting 
President of the Boston Theological Seminary, and from 
1 87 1 to 1873 as Dean of the University Faculty of Theology, 
and from 1869 as an original member of the University 
Corporation, — to serve as President of the University. 

In view of the fact that the present year (1897-98) com- 
pleted the first quarter of a century of the operation of the 
University as a completely organized institution, it seemed to 
the Trustees appropriate that at its close there should be 
some fitting commemoration of the beginnings of the work. 
The committee appointed to plan and provide for such com- 
memoration has been gratified at the friendly spirit of 
cooperation manifested by all whose aid has been sought, and 
for the same it hereby returns most hearty thanks. 

The following pages will give a brief summary of the 
events of the Quarter Centennial, the formal addresses, 
and a list of those who on the invitation of the Committee, 
took part in these interesting exercises. 



RESOLUTIONS. 



THE CORPORA TION TO THE PRESIDENT. 



Resol ved : — That we, the Trustees of Boston 
University, on its Twenty-fifth Anniversary, express 
our honor and esteem for Rev. William F. Warren, 
S.T.D., LL.D., the beloved President of the University. 

We recognize the notable fact that he is the first 
and only President of the University. Rarely is it 
given to any one to mould the destinies of an institution 
for a quarter of a century, and still more rarely to 
guide and govern in its origin as well. This distinc- 
tion among great educators belongs almost solely to 
Dr. Warren. 

We congratulate the University that in these nascent 
years it has had for so long a period the wise and 
liberal counsels of one who has held steadily to the 
highest and most comprehensive ideals. 

We believe that the unprecedented growth in 
numbers, the excellence of the work accomplished and 
the distinction to which already so many of the 
graduates of the institution have attained, is due in no 



vi Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



small measure to the catholic and progressive spirit of 
the man whose modesty of manner might hide him 
from the honors which are his due. 

We order this grateful recognition of his services to 
be inscribed upon our record and to be properly 
engrossed a7id presented to Dr. Warren. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Historical Note iii 

The Corporation to the President ..... v 

Committee of Arrangements ...... ix 

General Program x 

Tuesday Evening. 

Unversity Convocation Address I 

By Commissioner William T. Harris, LL.D. 

Wednesday Afternoon. 

Congratulatory Address . . . . . . 19 

By Governor Roger Wolcott, LL.D. 

Congratulatory Address 25 

By Mayor Josiah Quincy. 

Historical Address 29 

By President William F. Warren, S. T. D., LL.D. 

Wednesday Evening. 

Invocation by the Rev. E. Winchester Donald, LL.D. . 51 
Telegram from the Hon. John D. Long, LL.D., Secretary 

of the Navy -S3 

Address by the Rev. George A. Gordon, S. T. D. . . 54 

Address by Chief Justice Walbridge A. Field, LL.D. . 57 

Address by the Rev. James M. Buckley, S. T. D., LL.D. 62 

Address by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, S.T.D.,LL.D. 70 

Address by the Rev. Bishop J. F. Hurst, S.T.D., LL.D. 74 

Address by President Charles W. Eliot, LL.D. . . 81 



GENERAL COMMITTEE. 



ALDEN SPEARE, 
Chairman. 

James F. Almy, 
John L. Bates, 
Charles C. Bragdon, 
Joseph H. Chadwick, 
William R. Clark, 
Chester C. Corbin, 
Edward H. Dunn, 
Oliver H. Durrell, 



WILLIAM CLAFLIN, 
Honorary President. 

WILLARD T. PERRIN, 

Secretary. 



FROM THE CORPORATION : 

Sarah A. Emerson, 
Austin B. Fletcher, 
John D. Flint, 
Charles T. Gallagher, 
William I. Haven, 
Richard W. Husted, 
Joshua Merrill, 
Pliny Nickerson, 
Charles Parkhurst, 



Silas Peirce, 
John D. Pickles, 
William W. Potter, 
Sarah E. Sherman, 
George Skene, 
Daniel Steele, 
Edward M. Taylor, 
William F. Warren. 



FROM THE UNIVERSITY COUNCIL: 
Samuel C. Bennett, Marcus D. Buell, William E. Huntington, 

I. Tisdale Talbot. 



Homer Albers, 
Herbert C. Clapp, 
Judson B. Coit, 
Thomas B. Lindsay, 



FROM THE FACULTIES : 

Hinckley G. Mitchell, Charles W. Rishell, 
George K. Morris, John P. Sutherland, 

Marshall Perrin, Joseph R. Taylor, 

Arthur H. Wellman. 



FROM THE UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION : 

Frank E. Allard, John P. Kennedy, Charles Steere, 

John Wenzel. 

The assignment to SPECIAL COMMITTEES was as follows, the first named in 
such case acting as Chairman : — 

i. On Commencement Day Exercises and Speakers : Messrs. Speare, Bates, Dunn, 
Haven, Perrin, Warren. 

2. On arrangements for Convocation Day : Messrs. Warren, Albers, Allard, Clapp, 
Kennedy, Lindsay, Mitchell, Steere, Wenzel. 

3. On Hall, Invitations, Ticket-Distribution, etc. : Messrs. Dunn, Huntington, Husted, 
Nickerson, Warren. 

4. On Entertainment : Messrs. Pickles, Dunn, Merrill, Perrin, Potter, Skene, Taylor. 

5. On Reports for the Press : Messrs. Haven, Bragdon, Parkhurst. 

6. On Stationery, Printing, etc. : Messrs. Husted, Haven, Nickerson. 

7. On Expenses : Messrs. Chadwick, Dunn, Husted, Speare. 

8. On Quarter Centennial Offerings : 

A. From Alumni: Messrs. Haven, Bennett, Emerson, Gallagher, Perrin, Rishell, 
Sherman, Sutherland. 

B. From others than Alumni : Messrs. Almy, Bragdon, Chadwick, Clark, Corbin, 
Dunn, Durrell, Fletcher, Flint, Husted, Merrill, Peirce, Potter, Speare, Steele. 

9. On Resolutions and Quarter Centennial Publications : Messrs. Haven, Bates, Perrin. 



GENERAL PROGRAM. 



QUARTER CENTENNIAL ALUMNI MEETINGS. 

Banquet of the Theological Alumni. 
Hotel Bellevue, Monday, May 30, at 6 p. m. Business Session at 4.30. 

Banquet of the Law Alumni. 
Young's Hotel, Thursday, May 26, at 6 p. m. Business Session at 5.30. 

Banquet of the Medical Alumni. 
Parker House, Monday, May 30, at 7 p. m. Business Session at 6.00. 

Banquet of the Liberal Arts Alumni. 
Young's Hotel, Monday, May 30, at 6.30 p. M. Business Session at 5.00. 



QUARTER CENTENNIAL CONVOCATION DAY. 

tuesday, may thirty-first. 

Business Session of the University Convocation. 
Lorimer Hall, Tremont Temple, at 6.45 P. M. 

Invocation by the Rev. John W. Lindsay, S. T. D. 
First Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and of the Graduate 
Department. 

FIRST PUBLIC SERVICE OF THE QUARTER CENTENNIAL. 

Tremont Temple, at 7.45 p. m. 

Invocation by President Elmer H. Capen, S. T. D., Tufts 
College. 

University Convocation Address, by the Hon. William T. 
Harris, LL.D. 
United States Commissioner of Education. 

Benediction by the Rev. J. B. Foote, S. T. D. 
Oldest living Alumnus of Boston University. 



xii Boston University Q?iarter Centennial. 



QUARTER CENTENNIAL COMMENCEMENT DAY. 

wednesday, june first. 

Business Session of the Corporation at ten a. m. 



AFTERNOON EXERCISES. 

TREMONT TEMPLE, TWO O'CLOCK. 

MUSIC. 

Invocation by the Rev. Timothy Dwight, S. T. D., LL.D., 
President of Yale University. 

Address by the Governor, His Excellency Roger Wolcott, 

LL.D. 
Address by the Mayor, His Honor Josiah Quincy. 
Historical Address by President William F. Warren. 

music. 
Promotion of Candidates for Degrees. 

benediction. 



For the convenience of the specially invited delegates of 
colleges, learned societies, and other organizations, a collation was 
served in Isaac Rich Hall, in Ashburton Place, at half-past six 
o'clock. The Trustees received these guests at the same place at 
six o'clock. 



Boston University Quarter Centennial. xiii 



EVENING EXERCISES. 

" TREMONT TEMPLE, EIGHT O'CLOCK. 

UNIVERSITY REUNION. 

The Honorable Alden Speare, Vice-President of the Cor- 
poration, Presiding. 

Invocation by the Rev. E. Winchester Donald, S. T. D., 
Rector of Trinity Church. 

speakers. 
The Honorable John D. Long, LL.D., Secretary of the Navy. 
As Representative of President McKinley, and in behalf of the 
American people. 

(Mr. Long conditionally accepted but was detained by urgent public duties.) 

The Rev. George A. Gordon, S.T.D., Pastor of the Old South 
Church. 
In behalf of the Clergy. 

The Honorale Walbridge A. Field, LL.D., Chief Justice of 
Massachusetts. 
In behalf of the Legal Profession. 

The Rev. James M. Buckley, S.T.D., LL.D., Editor of the 
Christian Advocate. 
In behalf of the Press, Secular and Religious. 

The Rev. Edward E. Hale, S.T.D., Senior Pastor in Boston. 
In behalf of Boston Authors. 

The Rev. Bishop John F. Hurst, S.T.D., LL.D., Chancellor 
of the American University. 
In behalf of the Church Universal. 

President Charles W. Eliot, LL.D., of Harvard University. 
In behalf of Universities and Colleges. 



BOSTON UNIVERSITY 

QUARTER CENTENNIAL CONVOCATION DAY 

TUESDAY, MAY 31, 1898 



UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION ADDRESS. 



THE USE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
By the Honorable William T. Harris, LL.D. 

I have thought it would be appropriate on this occasion, 
when we celebrate the completion of a quarter centennial by 
this young and vigorous University, to ask your attention to 
the subject of higher education and its function in preserving 
and extending our civilization. Young as it is, Boston 
University has beheld greater changes in higher education 
within the epoch of its life than have been seen in any 
previous quarter-century since the Middle Ages. 

What with the extent of our public elementary schools and 
the continual instruction derived from newspapers, magazines, 
and books throughout life, we seem to have a population of 
self-educated men and women. One would expect a relative 
decrease of attendance on the college and university. He who 
runs may read, and certainly the hours of leisure from busi- 
ness are sufficient to make the habitual reader a learned man 
by the time he crosses the meridian of life. In a national 
career full of opportunities we should expect a growing im- 
patience of long school terms. Eight years in the elementary 
schools followed by four years in secondary schools, and then 
four years at college followed by a three-year term of post- 
graduate study — how can the American youth be made to 
undertake so much ? 

It is a complete surprise for us to learn the actual 
statistics in regard to the schooling of our people. In 
1872, the year before the founding of Boston University, 



Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



the records of higher education show for the entire nation an 
enrollment of 590 students in each million of inhabitants — a 
little more than one college student on an average for each 
community of two thousand population. (See Appendix I.) 
Not only did the growth of schools for higher education 
keep up with the growth in population, but the enrollment 
increased year by year until in 1895 (twenty-three years later) 
instead of 590 students we had 1,190 in each million. The 
quota had doubled, and it has since increased. And it is the 
more surprising when we call to mind the fact that the 
standard of admission to the Freshman class has been placed 
much higher. The elite colleges have followed the lead of 
Harvard for twenty-five years, and their requirements for 
admission demand nearly two years more than was needed 
fifty years ago. Even the colleges that have resisted the 
tendency to raise standards of admission have been obliged 
to yield, some more and some less. Considering the amount 
of work counted as higher education fifty years or even twenty- 
five years ago and now performed by high schools and 
academies, we are right in affirming that the quota receiving 
higher education in each million of people is three times as 
great as twenty-five years ago, when Boston University was 
founded. 

But it is not numbers alone that have changed. The work 
performed in higher education has changed still more. In 
fact it is now in process of unfolding a second phase of 
work quite as important as that which it has performed since 
the beginning. To a course of study for culture — the so- 
called course in philosophy, the academic course in the 
humanities and mathematics — it has been in process of adding 
a course of three years of special work in the laboratory or in 
the seminary — the student choosing his narrow field and 
concentrating on it his entire attention for three years, and 
at the end receiving a doctor's degree. This second part of 
the course of study in the University is a discipline in original 
investigation. 



Address of Hon. Wm. T. Harris. 



The student in his elementary, secondary, and the first part 
of the higher course of study, has been in search of culture. 
He has mastered one by one the several branches of human 
learning in their results and in the elements of their methods 
(but certainly not in their working methods, their practical 
modes of investigation). Now in the second part of higher 
education the student selects a small field and masters it 
practically, not merely learning what others have done in it, 
but pushing his research into new fields until he can say with 
assurance, I have made new discoveries in a limited field 
of human endeavor and am become to a small extent an 
original authority. 

Certainly this doubles the value of higher education although 
the new field, the field of specialization, is in no sense a 
substitute for the other field, that of the mastery of the lessons 
of human learning. 

Within the short period between 1872 and 1897, the quarter 
centennial of Boston University, we have seen the feeble 
infancy of the method of original investigation grow to sturdy 
youth. The next quarter-century — and may it be as prosper- 
ous as the one just completed for this institution and for its 
kindred — the next quarter-century will see the youth come 
to a vigorous manhood and vast numbers of young men and 
women undertake the special investigations necessary to 
solve problems arising in our civilization — problems relating 
to material environment and problems relating to the adjust- 
ment of social, political and international problems. 

The number of students reported as engaged in post-grad- 
uate work in all our colleges and universities in 1872 was only 
198. This has increased steadily, doubling once in five or six 
years, until in 1897 the number was 4,919. From less than 
200 the post-graduates have increased to almost 5,000. They 
are twenty-five times as numerous now as at the time Boston 
University was founded. (See Appendix II.) 

Professional students, too, have increased. The number 
studying law, medicine, and theology in 1872 was only 280 in 



Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



each million of inhabitants. In 1896 the 280 had become 740 
in the million. (See Appendix III.) 

In the same quarter of a century scientific and technical 
schools have multiplied. In the seven years from 1890 to 
1896 the number of students in engineering and applied 
science increased from 15,000 to nearly 24,000 (14,869 to 
2 3>598). (See Appendix IV.) 

In the first days of higher education it was naturally 
believed that only the professional schools for law, medicine, 
and divinity needed a preparation in the college course. Now 
it is beginning to be seen that the most practical occupations, 
those for the procurement of food, clothing and shelter, as 
well as those for the direction of social and political life, need 
also the studies that lead to the B. A. degree as well as the 
specializing post-graduate studies that lead to original combin- 
ations in industry and politics. 

Post-graduate work as it was in 1872 had not fully seized the 
idea of original investigation. There was a dim idea that 
higher education should end as it had begun, namely, as a 
system of set lessons with text books and recitations. Post- 
graduate work should be a continuation of undergraduate 
work. The idea of the laboratory for experiment and research 
and of the seminary and library for original investigations in 
history, politics, archaeology, and sociology, has developed 
within that time for us. 

Other nations (one thinks especially of Germany) have had 
this for a longer period. The significance of this precious 
addition to our system of education will become clear if we go 
over for ourselves some of the grounds which make higher 
education more useful and productive than elementary and 
secondary. 

There is something specific in higher education, as it exists 
in the college, which gives an advantage to its graduates in the 
way of directive power over their fellow-citizens. Elementary 
education is a defective sort of education, not merely because 
it includes only a few years of school work, but because its 



Address of Hon. Wm. T. Harris. 5 



methods of study and habits of thought are necessarily crude 
and inadequate. 

The elementary course of study is adapted to the first eight 
years of school life, say from the age of six to that of fourteen 
years. That course of study deals chiefly with giving the 
child a mastery over the symbols of reading, writing, and 
arithmetic, and the technical words in which are expressed the 
distinctions of arithmetic, geography, grammar, and history. 
The child has not yet acquired much knowledge of human 
nature, nor of the world of facts and forces about him. He 
has a tolerably quick grasp of isolated things and events, but 
he has very small power of synthesis. He cannot combine in 
his little mind things and events so as to perceive whole 
processes. He cannot perceive the principles and laws 
underlying the things and events which are brought under his 
notice. He consequently is not able to get much insight into 
the trend of human affairs, or to draw logical conclusions from 
convictions or ideas. 

It is a necessary characteristic of primary or elementary 
instruction that it must take the world of human learning 
in fragments and fail to give its pupils an insight into the 
constitution of things. Let anyone who claims the most for 
the elementary methods of instruction say whether his pupils 
at ten years old are capable of such a comprehensive grasp of 
any subject as will become possible after four years more 
of good teaching. Let the ardent believer in scientific 
method say whether the child can learn at twelve years to 
make allowance for his personal equation and subtract the 
defects of his bodily senses from his inventory of facts of 
nature. Is it to be expected that a child can free himself from 
prejudices, not to say superstitions, at that age and that he 
can discriminate between what he actually sees and what he 
expects to see? It is somewhat better in the ages 14 to 18. 

The education of high schools, academies, and preparatory 
schools — what American writers call secondary schools — 
begins to correct this inadequacy of elementary education. 



6 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



The pupil begins to see things and events as parts of 
processes, and to understand their significance by tracing 
them back into their causes and forward into their re- 
sults. 

While elementary education fixes on isolated things, 
secondary education deals with the relations of things and 
events in groups. It studies forces and laws, and the mode 
and manner in which things are fashioned and events 
accomplished. To turn off from occupation with dead results 
and to come to the investigation of the living process of 
production is a great step. 

Where the pupil in the elementary school studies arithmetic 
and solves problems in particular numbers, the secondary pupil 
studies algebra and solves problems in general terms ; for each 
algebraic formula is a rule by which an indefinite number of 
arithmetical examples may be worked out. In geometry 
the secondary pupil learns the necessary relations which 
exist between spatial forms. In general history he studies 
the collisions of one nation with another. In natural science 
he discovers the cycles of nature's phenomena. In acquiring 
foreign languages he studies the variations of words to indicate 
relations of syntax; he becomes acquainted with the structure 
of language, in which is revealed the degree of consciousness 
of the people who made it and used it. Language reveals all 
this, but not to the youth of sixteen. He gets some glimpse, 
it is true, but it will take years for him to see as a consistent 
whole the character of a people as implied in its mode of 
speech. For to do this he must be able to subtract his 
personal equation again. He must be able to see how things 
would seem to him if he did not think them in the highly 
analytic English tongue, but in a language with inflections 
like Latin, Greek, or Sanscrit ; in a language like the Chinese 
where even the parts of speech are not clearly differentiated 
and no inflections have arisen. 

But the most serious defect of secondary education is that 
it does not find a unity deep enough to connect the intellect 



Address of Hon. Wm. T. Harris. 



and will. Hence it does not convert intellectual perceptions 
into rules of action. This is left for higher education. A 
principle of, action is always a summing up of a series. 
Things and events have been inventoried and relations have 
been canvassed : the results must now be summed up ; the 
conclusion must be reached before the will can act. If we 
act without summing up the results of inventory and reflection, 
our act will be a lame one; for the judgment will remain in 
suspense. 

We may contrast elementary education and secondary 
education with the education that comes to the illiterate from 
experience. He may as a locomotive engineer know all the 
safe and all the dangerous places on his road. He may know 
every tie and every rail, but in this he knows only one or two 
processes and their full trend. He is limited by his own 
individual observation. The man of books, on the other hand, 
has entered into the experience of others. Books have given 
him a knowledge of causes. He can explain his particular 
experience by carrying it back to its cause. In the cause he 
sees a common ground for the particular fact of his experience 
and also for the endless series of facts really present only in 
the experience of other men, present and past, and only 
possible for his experience in an endless time. 

Thus even elementary and secondary education, though 
inferior to higher education, lift up the boy or girl above the 
man or woman educated only in the school of experience. 
They have attained that which will grow into a much broader 
life. They will be able to interpret and assimilate vast fields 
of experience when once they encounter them in life ; while 
the illiterate is quickly at the end of his growth, and what he 
has learned will not assist him to learn more. 

This relation of illiterate experience to elementary-school 
education helps to understand the defect of elementary as 
compared with secondary, and secondary as compared with 
higher education. 



8 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



It is the glory of higher education that it lays chief stress 
on the comparative method of study ; that it makes philosophy 
its leading discipline ; that it gives an ethical bent to all of 
its branches of study. Higher education seeks as its first 
goal the unity of human learning. Then in its second stage 
it specializes. It first studies each branch in the light of all 
others. It studies each branch in its history. 

A good definition of science is that it unites facts in such a 
way that each fact throws light on all facts within a special 
province and all facts throw light on each fact. Nature is 
first inventoried and divided into provinces — minerals, plants, 
animals, etc., geology, botany, zoology. Thus secondary 
education deals with the organizing of facts into subordinate 
groups, while higher education undertakes to organize the 
groups into one group. 

The first part of higher education, that for the A. B. degree 
— as we have said already — teaches the unity of human 
learning. It shows how all branches form a connected whole, 
and what each contributes to the explanation of the others, 
This has well been called the course in philosophy. After the 
course in philosophy comes the selection of a specialty ; for 
there is no danger of distorted views when one has seen the 
vision of the whole system of human learning. Higher 
education cannot possibly be given to the person of immature 
age. For the youthful mind is immersed in a sea of particulars. 
A college that gave the degree of Bachelor of Arts to students 
of eighteen years would give only a secondary course of 
education after all. For it would find itself forced to use the 
methods of instruction that characterize the secondary school. 
It would deal with subordinate groups and not with the world 
view. The serious tone of mind, the earnest attitude which 
inquires for the significance of a study to the problem of life, 
cannot be formed in the normally developed student from 
fourteen to eighteen years of age. But at eighteen years of 
age the problems of practical life begin to press for solution. 
This in itself is a reason for the demand for philosophy, or for 



Address of Hon. Wm. T. Harris. 



a measure that may settle for him the relative value of each 
element of experience. The youth of proper age to enter on 
higher education must have already experienced much of 
human life, and have arrived at the point where he begins to 
feel the necessity for a regulative principle, or a principle that 
shall guide him in deciding the endless questions which press 
upon him for settlement. He must have begun to ask himself 
what career or vocation he will choose for life. 

Taking the youth at this epoch, when he begins to inquire 
for a first principle as a guide to his practical decisions, the 
college gives him a compend of human experience. It shows 
him the verdict of the earliest and latest great thinkers upon 
the meaning of the world. It gives him the net result of 
human opinion as to the trend of history. It gathers into one 
focus the results of the vast labors of specialists in natural 
science, in history, jurisprudence, philology, political science 
and moral philosophy. 

If the college graduate is not acquainted with more than the 
elements of these multifarious branches of human learning, 
yet he is all the more impressed by their bearing upon the 
conduct of life. He sees their function in the totality, 
although he may not be an expert in the methods of investiga- 
tion in any one of them. 

For the reason that higher education makes the ethical 
insight its first object, its graduates hold the place, in the 
community at large, of spiritual monitors. They exercise a 
directive power altogether disproportionate to their number. 
They lead in the three learned professions, and they lead in 
the management of education of all kinds. They correct the 
one-sided tendencies of elementary education, and they furnish 
the wholesome centripetal forces to hold in check the 
extravagances of the numerous self-educated people who have 
gone off in special directions after leaving the elementary 
school. 

Dr. Charles F. Thwing, President of Western Reserve 
University, a few years ago was at the pains to hit upon a 



10 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



novel method of comparing the college graduate with the rest 
of society. He took the six volumes of Appleton's Cyclopedia 
of American Biography and counted the college graduates in 
its list of over 15,000 names. A little more than one-third of 
all were discovered to be college men. A safe inference was 
one that one out of ten thousand of the population who have 
not had a college education training has become of sufficient 
note to be selected for mention in a biographical dictionary, 
while one out of each 40 of our college men finds his place 
there. The chance of the college man as compared with the non- 
college man is as 250 to 1, to become distinguished as a public 
man of some sort, — soldier, naval officer, lawyer, statesman, 
clergyman, teacher, author, physician, artist, scientist, inventor 
— in short, a man with directive power of some kind able to 
combine matter into a new and useful form, or to combine men 
in such a way as to reconcile their differences and produce a 
harmonious whole of endeavor. 

We have already explained that the person who has merely 
an elementary schooling has laid stress on the mechanical 
means of culture — on the arts of reading, writing, computing, 
and the like. He has trained his mind for the acquirement of 
isolated details. But he has not been disciplined in compara- 
tive studies. He has not learned how to compare each fact 
with other facts, and still less how to compare each science 
with other sciences. He has not inquired as to the trend of 
his science as a whole, nor has he asked as to its imperfections 
which need correction from the standpoint of other sciences. 
He has not yet entertained the question as to its bearing on 
the conduct of life. 

We would say of him that he has not yet learned the 
difference between knowledge and wisdom ; he has not learned 
the method of converting knowledge into wisdom ; for it is the 
best description of the college course of study to say that its 
aim is to convert knowledge into wisdom — to show how to 
discern the bearing of all departments of knowledge upon 
each. 



Address of Hon. Wm. T. Harris. II 



Again, considering the permanent effects on the intellectual 
character, it is evident that the individual who has received 
only an elementary education is at great disadvantage as 
compared with the person who has received a higher education 
in the college or university, making all allowances for the 
imperfections of existing institutions. The individual is prone 
to move on in the same direction and in the same channel 
which he has taken under the guidance of his teacher. Very 
few persons change their methods after they leave school. 
Hence the importance of reaching the influence of the method 
of higher education, the method of original investigation, 
before one closes his school career. 

It is easy to enumerate the influences of the university 
and see their great transforming power. Its distinguished 
professors, its venerable reputation, the organization of the 
students and teaching corps into an institutional whole, the 
isolation of the student from the strong ties of the home and 
the home community, all these, taken together, are able to effect 
this change in method when brought to bear upon a young man 
for four years. He acquires an attitude of mind which we 
have already described as critical and comparative. It is at 
the same time conservative. He has learned to expect that 
the existing institution may have deeper grounds for its being 
than appear at first sight ; while on the other hand, the mind 
trained in elementary and secondary methods is easily 
surprised and captivated by superficial considerations and has 
small power of resistance against shallow, critical views. It is 
easily swept away by a specious argument for reform, although 
we must admit that the duller, commonplace intellect that has 
received only an elementary education is apt to follow use and 
wont and not question the established order. It is the 
brighter class of minds that stop with the elementary school, 
which become agitators in the bad sense of the term. The 
restless and discontented class of people, those who mistake 
revolution for reform, are recruited from the elementary ranks. 
But the commonplace intellect has no adaptability, or at least 



12 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



small power of readjustment, in view of new circumstances. 
The disuse of hand labor and the adoption of machine labor, 
for instance, finds the common laborer unable to substitute 
brain labor for hand labor, and it keeps him in the path of 
poverty wending his way to the almshouse. 

Our numerous self-educated men, of whom we are so proud, 
are quite apt to be persons who have never advanced beyond 
elementary methods. Very often they are men of great 
accumulations in the way of isolated scraps of information. 
They have memory pouches unduly developed. They lay 
stress on some insignificant phase of human affairs. They 
advocate with great vigor the importance of some local center, 
some partial human interest, as the chief object of all life. 
Not unlike them is the astronomer who opposes the helio- 
centric theory, and favors the claim of some planet or some 
satellite as the true center. 

This is the crying evil with our dominance of elementary 
education and our swarms of "self-educated" men. They 
take the primary view of all things, and this is of necessity a 
distorted view. Their theory supposes, innocently enough, 
that the immediate view of things shows them as they truly 
are. It looks at the present object out of its historic con- 
nection and fancies that it knows it, without taking into 
consideration the process by which it has been generated and 
come to be what it is. All college or university work — even 
the poorest specimens of it — deals more or less with the 
genesis of things — with their process of becoming — and sets 
the student into a habit of mind which is dissatisfied with the 
immediate aspect of things and impels him to go at once 
behind them to casual processes and seek to find what states 
and conditions preceded, and how the changes were wrought, 
and exactly why we have things as they are. It gets to 
understand the trend of things and can tell, prophetically, 
what is likely to come next. 

This primary view of the world adopted by so many of our 
"self-educated " men — I admit them to be men of great merit, 



Address of Hon. Wm. T. Harris. 13 



so far as good intentions and persistent industry are in question 
— explains why so many self-educated men are men of 
hobbies, or " fads " as they are called in the slang of the day. 
A hobby or fad is some fragmentary view of the world set up 
for the central principle of all things. It has been stated that 
a man with a hobby does not see his favorite subject in its 
just relations — does not comprehend its process of origination 
nor see how it implies the existence of other things. He 
does not understand the interdependence of all things. In 
contrast to him stands the old-time graduate of college, before 
the admission requirements had been raised. He received 
the first part of higher education, the culture side of it, as he 
does now. It gave him his view of the world. It is true that 
the family and the Church give to the child his view of the 
world, but they omit the logical connections. The child does 
not think out the results nor see their grounds, nor does he 
apply that view of the world as a measuring rod to the branches 
of knowledge. 

Let us conclude this address by a summary of the 
views presented. In the college the pupil has the thought 
of his civilization presented to him as a practical guiding 
principle. He meets it in every recitation room and in the 
general conduct of the institution. He finds himself in 
association with a large number of students all occupied upon 
this work of learning the regulative principles not only of 
human conduct but also of the world of knowledge. 

The lawyer, after working years and years over his cases, 
comes by and by to have what is called a " legal mind," so that 
he sees at a glance, almost as by intuition, what the law will 
be in a new case. So in the four years of college under- 
graduate life the student gets an insight which enables him 
to decide immediately a phase of the problem of life. He 
forms a habit of mind which inquires constantly of each thing 
and event : How does this look in the light of the whole of 
human learning? What is the "good form" which the 
consensus of the scholars of the world has fixed for this ? He 



14 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



learns at once to suspect what are called " isms " and universal 
panaceas as one-sided statements. The wisdom of the race 
begins to form a conscious element of his life. 

While the first part of higher education gives this general 
insight into what is good form in view of the unity of human 
learning, the second part — that which teaches methods of 
original investigation — should be made accessible to all 
students of colleges and universities. 

For this purpose endowments are needed, first in the form 
of fellowships which will enable the student to live comfort- 
ably while he is preparing himself for his doctor's degree. A 
second kind of an endowment may promote research and take 
the form of prizes for special investigations. 

The laboratories and seminaries of this post-graduate course 
may and do take up the practical problems of the life of the 
people. These are capable of immense benefit in sociology 
and politics, to say nothing of the industries of the people, 
rural and urban. The entire civil service of the United States 
should find employment for experts armed with methods of 
original investigation and with the readiness and daring to 
undertake the solution of problems which offer themselves 
perpetually in our civil life. The town council, the board of 
public works, the various directive powers which manage the 
affairs of the state and municipality are in constant need of 
light, and the student of the post-graduate department of the 
university is the person needed to furnish by his special studies 
the aggregate result of the experience of the world in 
answering these practical and theoretical wants. In a 
country studying ever new political questions and questions 
in sociology, the student who obtains his doctor's degree from 
the post-graduate course can apply his knowledge, and apply 
it rationally, without losing his self-possession. 

Since 1880 when our census showed a population of more 
than fifty millions we have ascended above the horizon of the 
great nations of Europe. 



Address of Hon. Wm. T.Harris. 15 



Henceforth we have a new problem, namely, to adjust 
ourselves to the European unity of civilization. It is absurd 
to suppose that the problems of diplomacy which will 
arise in our relations to the states of the Old World 
can be solved by minds untrained in the university. For 
it is higher education which takes the student back to 
historic source and descends from national beginnings, tracing 
the stream of events to the various points at which modern 
nations have arrested their development. Successful diplomacy 
is not possible without thorough knowledge of national 
aspirations and their historic genesis. 

It is almost equally important that our home problems, 
social and political, shall be studied by our university specialists. 
Perpetual readjustment is before us. There is the new 
aristocracy of wealth struggling against the aristocracy of 
birth. To both is opposed the aristocracy of culture, the only 
one that is permanent. All may come into the aristocracy of 
culture, but it requires supreme endeavor on the part of the 
individuals. 

With the great inventions of the age we find ourselves all 
living on a border land. We are brought into contact with 
alien nationalities and alien forms of civilization. We are 
forever placed in antagonism with some environment, material 
or spiritual, and our endeavor must perforce be to effect a 
reconciliation — to unite the conflicting ideas in a deeper one 
that conserves what is good in each. There is no other 
recourse ; we must look to higher education to furnish the 
formulae for the solution of the problems of our national life. 

We accordingly rejoice in the fact of the increasing 
popularity of the University in both its functions — that of 
culture and that of specialization. 



1 6 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



Appendix I. 



Number of college students to each 1,000,000 persons in the 

United States (excluding professional and technical 

students, but including post-graduate students). 

1872 590 1885-86 700 

1873 74° 1886-87 7 IQ 

1874 760 1887-88 710 

1875 740 1888-89 75° 

1876 720 1889-90 880 

1877 710 1890-91 930 

1878 ... 790 1891-92 1,020 

1879 780 1892-93 1,080 

1880 780 1893-94 1,140 

1881 760 1894-95 1,190 

1882-83 74° 1895-96 1,220 

1883-84 750 1896-97 1,210 

1884-85 760 

Appendix II. 

Number of post-graduate students in the universities and 
colleges of the United States each year for twenty- 
five years. (These are included in Appendix I.) 

1871-72 198 1885-86 935 

1872-73 219 1886-87 1,237 

1873-74 283 1887-88 1,290 

1874-75 369 1888-89 M43 

1875-76 399 1889-90 1,717 

1876-77 389 1890-91 2,131 

1877-78 414 1891-92 2,499 

1878-79 465 1892-93 2,851 

1879-80 411 1893-94 3,493 

1880-81 460 1894-95 3,999 

1882-83 5 22 1895-96 4,363 

1883-84 778 1896-97 4,919 

1884-85 869 



Appendix III. 

Number of professional students to each 1,000,000 persons in 
the United States. 

1872 280 1885-86 450 

1876 380 1890-91 570 

1 881 440 1895-96 740 

Appendix IV. 
Students in scientific and technical courses in the United 

States. 

1889-90 14,869 1893-94 23,254 

1890-91 15,586 1894-95 24,055 

1891-92 17,012 1895-96 23,598 

1892-93 20,329 



BOSTON UNIVERSITY 

QUARTER CENTENNIAL COMMENCEMENT DAY 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE I, 1898 



AFTERNOON SESSION. 

President William F. Warren, Presiding. 



PRESIDENT WARREN. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — In behalf of the Trustees of 
Boston University, I have the honor and pleasure to welcome 
you to this hall. The precise occasion of this quarter- 
centennial celebration has already been sufficiently stated 
in the programmes in your hands. We have invoked the 
blessing of heaven upon our institution, as it stands at the 
threshold of a new quarter century. It is surely fitting that 
we should next invoke the blessing of our Commonwealth. 
It is to the state that the University owes its corporate 
powers ; it is to the state that it owes its high commission to 
promote in the world learning and piety. 

Despite duties of the most exacting character, despite 
labors most exhausting, despite wearinesses and war-burdens 
which no man but himself can ever know, the honored 
Governor of Massachusetts has kindly consented to favor us 
with his presence, and to bring us the message of the state. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, His Excellency Governor Wolcott. 

GOVERNOR WOLCOTT. 

Mr. President, Students, Graduates and Friends of Boston 
University : — I have broken away for a few moments from 
duties at the State House that must summon me back 
shortly, to bring to you on this twenty fifth anniversary of the 
birth of your college the greetings and the God-speed of the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It would be, under any 
circumstances, a personal pleasure to me to be brought face 
to face with this great audience of men and women called 
together to celebrate an anniversary like this, dedicated as it 
is to the higher education of the citizens of America. But it 
is on this occasion even more than a personal pleasure to hie, 
for in the constitution of the Commonwealth, I feel that, as 



20 Boston University Quarter Ce?itennial. 



the official representative of the Commonwealth, I am bidden, 
as my duty, to be here today, and to bring whatever 
encouragement word of mine can bring on behalf of the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

When John Adams, as one of the great services which he 
rendered to the Commonwealth and the Nation, drafted the 
constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1779, 
he wrote in it a section that at that time was unique in the 
history of organic law, and which has remained until the 
present day, laying its mandate upon legislatures and 
magistrates of this Commonwealth to bear in mind and to 
encourage the cause of education. I will read briefly from 
this section to you, because there are certain incidents con- 
nected with its genesis and origin that I think may be of 
interest to you. It is Section II. of Chapter V., Constitution 
of Massachusetts : — 

" Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among 
the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their 
rights and liberties ; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities 
and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and 
among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legisla- 
tures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to 
cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of 
them." 

And then there are added other clauses that give an even 
wider scope to this broad duty of those who should succeed 
to the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 
after he and the men of his generation had passed away. 

Now, John Adams, in describing how he came to write 
that clause in the constitution of the Commonwealth, states 
that during his journeys — which at that time were made in the 
saddle or in carriages — to the Provincial Congress, it was his 
custom to stop at Norwalk in Connecticut, and that there he 
had been hospitably entertained by a certain Mr. Arnold, who 
had an extensive collection of stuffed birds and preserved 
insects. And he states that from time to time, as he passed 
there, he became so interested in this collection — which, by 



Congratulatory Address by Governor Wolcott. 21 



the way, passed later to England, and I believe is still pre- 
served there — that it lay so much upon his heart and mind 
that it was the duty of a republic to foster the cause of 
letters and of the sciences, that later when he went abroad, 
he made certain inquiries, and kept his active mind open to 
whatever bore upon the subject there; and finally, upon 
returning to this Commonwealth, and being deputed to write 
a draft of the constitution of Massachusetts — which was 
adopted three years after the Declaration of Independence 
was written, and nine years before the constitution of the 
United States — he deemed it his duty to write into that 
constitution, as a part of the fundamental and organic law of 
the Commonwealth, not subject to the caprice of subsequent 
legislatures, this fundamental duty of legislatures and magis- 
trates for all time to come, — to foster the cause of the higher 
education, learning, and of the sciences. He states that he 
presented that section with some misgivings, and it is perhaps 
interesting to know that a somewhat similar section presented 
in a draft of the constitution of another state was rejected by 
the legislature of that state. But in the constitution of the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts this duty remains ; and I 
trust, my friends, that it may ever remain as a worthy testi- 
monial to the intelligence of our fathers, who themselves 
were sons of men who established a university and provided 
for a system of public schools in the very infancy and poverty 
of the first settlement of the state. (Applause.) 

It is therefore in obedience to a duty, as well as in gratifi- 
cation of a personal pleasure, that I stand here today and 
bring to you the greetings of the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts. Personally, I have always felt, among many causes 
of pride in the history of my native state, that not the least of 
her claims upon our affection and loyalty has been the 
honorable record that the Commonwealth has always made 
for herself in the cause of education. In a great degree, 
Massachusetts may be said to be a great school-house for the 
United States of America. Her little academies, placed upon 



22 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



many hillsides throughout the state, her public schools and 
her great institutions of learning, call together men and 
women from all the states of this union, and from countries 
beyond the sea. 

One of the important institutions is the one which I have 
the honor of addressing today. Less remarkable in antiquity 
than some of the other institutions of the state, you have yet 
already, through your graduates, won for yourselves an honor- 
able place among the ranks of educated men and women. 
Would that my honored predecessor in the position which I 
have the honor to hold — he who had won the diploma of the 
Law School — had been permitted to bring to you today the 
greetings of the Commonwealth ! With what filial affection 
would he have spoken of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ! 
With what hearty sympathy would he have felt the interest 
that runs through your hearts today on this anniversary 
occasion ! (Applause.) 

Boston University already stands in numbers, and in its 
grade of education, among the foremost educational institu- 
tions of this country. I have read with interest the admirable 
address written by your distinguished president, which gives 
the history of this University. I observe with gratification 
that it is there stated that this is the first college or univer- 
sity that from its very first stage has thrown open all its 
departments on absolutely equal terms to men and women. 
(Applause.) 

There is another feature of this University which I regard 
also with especial interest. You have cast aside deliberately— 
undoubtedly with "malice aforethought" — the method of 
organization of the earlier colleges of this land. Your college 
boasts no college yard, with its accumulated buildings, iri 
picturesque groups. You do not boast dormitories which 
provide a possibly mitigated system of monastic life. 
(Laughter.) You lack absolutely that itnperiuni in irhperio 
which creates of a college yard, and what it contains, a sort of 
independent community in the cities or towns in which the 



Congratulatory Address by Governor Wolcott. 23 

universities are placed. There are some of us, my friends, 
who look back upon that life within a college yard, set thus 
apart for the- uses of the college, with an affectionate and 
loving memory that is gilded with the light of hopeful youth. 
And yet I trust I am open-minded enough to see that there 
may be compensating advantages in placing the students at 
once in quick contact with the great floods and currents 
of municipal life. I can see that that, too, may have its 
advantages. And I trust, although it was my misfortune to 
receive my college education in an institution given over to 
the small function of educating men only (laughter), I can yet 
see that there may be advantages in bringing the eager minds 
of both sexes together in the recitation room ; and I can 
certainly say this : that so far as my opinion goes, whatever 
possible drawbacks might have been anticipated, they have 
not been realized. 

Therefore, I bring today the hearty greetings of the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts ; I bring her God-speed as 
you enter upon the second quarter-century of your progress. 
As a citizen of the Commonwealth, I bid you remember that 
it is not the mere accumulation of learning, that it is not 
constituting the mind a dead reservoir of accumulated facts, 
that makes education of value, and makes its claims 
paramount upon the Commonwealth. It is rather that 
these institutions of the higher learning have for their lofty 
purpose to train the human mind so that he who possesses it 
can go forth and do God's work in the world which clamors 
for such workers. Remember that unless learning makes of 
you good citizens, it fails of its high purpose ; remember that 
the great destiny of this country rests upon this apprehension 
of your responsibility ; remember that whether it be in times 
Of peace or in the ardent fires of war, this country places its 
mandate upon those to whom are given great opportunities, 
and in its turn says to them : " Freely ye have received, freely 
give." (Applause.) 



24 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



PRESIDENT WARREN. 

Before introducing the next speaker, I desire to remind you 
that the name of Governor Roger Wolcott was as familiar 
here in New England a hundred and fifty years ago as it is 
today. The bearer of that honored name was then the 
colonial governor of Connecticut. He held a great variety of 
civil offices and was judge of the superior court, and at the 
capture of Louisburg in 1745 his skill and valor won for him 
the title of a major-general. And his son in like manner was 
a judge, in like manner a major-general, and had the honor of 
being one of the signers of the immortal Declaration of 
Independence. Were we believers in transmigration, we 
might, on the basis of the doctrine of reincarnation, find a 
good reason for the eminence, for the versatility, for the 
bravery, for the trusted qualities of the Chief Magistrate of 
Massachusetts. (Applause.) 



The next name upon our program reminds us of another line 
of illustrious men. The first bearer of it to honor Boston lived 
more than a hunderd and fifty years ago. His son was not a 
signer of the Declaration of Independence, as I remember it, 
but he was so distinguished an advocate of American inde- 
pendence that his name is forever associated with that of 
James Otis and General Joseph Warren. His son, bearing 
the same name, was even more conspicuous as a statesman 
and as a scholar. He was the second mayor of our goodly 
city, and left a deep impress upon our municipal history. For 
sixteen years he was the president of Harvard University, 
leaving behind him there the record of an administration 
considered the most illustrious of the institution up to that 
time. It is very appropriate that the citizens of Boston 
recently have called the present bearer of that name to the 
chief magistracy of this city, and it is equally fitting that we 
give an enthusiastic welcome to Josiah Quincy, Mayor of 
Boston. 



Congratulatory Address by Mayor Quincy. 25 



MAYOR QUINCY. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — The city of 
Boston occupies a somewhat different relation to this 
University from that which the Commonwealth occupies. 
If it is under the authority of the Commonwealth that this 
University is establised and conducted, it is in the city of 
Boston, in the midst of its active life, and in close contact with 
its forces, that the University has established its seat and 
made its halls. His Excellency the Governor has happily 
touched upon the difference between the university that 
stands isolated in the smaller community, and the university 
like yours, which is planted in the midst of the life of a great 
city, and which leaves its students to make their homes as 
best they may among the homes of the people of that city. 
There is a place in our American life, with its lack of historical 
background and inheritance, for the university which has 
something of tradition and of history behind it. But there is 
certainly also, perhaps equally, a place for the university 
which springs into being as it were, which finds its life in the 
midst of a great community, and which starts upon its 
educational career untrammelled by the traditions of the past, 
in touch with the spirit of the present, and looking forward to 
the changes which the future brings into our lives. We 
would not spare Harvard and Yale, and the great universities 
which have this precious inheritance, from our American life, 
but neither would we spare such institutions as Boston 
University, which, founded nearer to our day, having only the 
comparatively short inheritance of twenty-five years behind, 
are free in a way in which the older institutions of learning 
can not be free, to bring themselves closely into contact with 
the life of the day, to plant themselves in the midst of a great 
municipal community, and to stand for all that is progressive, 
all that is advancing, all that is modern in education. That 
has been the privilege of Boston University. And it has 
certainly meant a great deal to the city of Boston that such an 
institution of higher education has been founded within its 



26 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



limits, and has been carried on in close contact with its life — 
affording an opportunity for the higher education to many of 
the sons and daughters of Boston who otherwise would have 
been unable to obtain it. It has meant, therefore, a great 
deal to Boston that this University has been established and 
carried on right in the heart of the city, in close contact with 
its life. 

His Excellency the Governor has touched upon that feature 
of the organization of your University which is, perhaps, its 
prominent characteristic, distinguishing it from the other 
great universities of our land. It seems to me personally to 
be a great thing that you have shown that it is possible to 
carry on successfully and with high educational standards, a 
great university, in a great city, upon a basis affording 
complete equality of opportunity for men and women. And 
there is no citizen of Boston who is more heartily in sympathy 
with that feature of Boston University, who regards it as a 
more honorable, distinguishing characteristic of Boston 
University than the speaker of the present moment. 
(Applause.) 

Perhaps the proudest distinction which the city of Boston 
enjoys today, perhaps its most valued reputation, is that of 
being an educational center. We are proud of the interest 
that is taken in Boston in all forms of education. We are 
proud of our public schools and of the opportunities which 
they afford to the humblest of our citizens for obtaining the 
benefit of education for their children. But it is certainly no 
small source of pride and gratification to the citizens of 
Boston that this educational reputation of our city is not con- 
fined to our public schools ; that the educational facilities 
which we afford extend upward to the top, and that our 
educational system is crowned by this Boston University 
whose twenty-fifth anniversary we are celebrating today. 
(Applause.) 

I can only express the interest which I know that the 
citizens of Boston in general feel in the continued growth and 



Co7igratulatory Address of Mayor Quincy. 27 



prosperity of this University, and in the work which it is 
doing in the midst of the city, alike for the children of the 
citizens of Boston, and for those who come here from a dis- 
tance to avail themselves of the educational facilities which 
you offer. I can only express the hope, which I know all the 
citizens of Boston feel, that the future of this University may 
be even more successful than its past has been ; that it may 
go on increasing, not only in its numbers, — and the life and 
work of a great university are only partially measured by the 
number of its students, — but that it may go on increasing in 
the value, in the richness, in the fruitfulness, and in the 
comprehensiveness of the education which it is giving to the 
hundreds of young men and young women who are attending 
its various courses. May that education in the quarter of a 
century to come, extend in usefulness and in value, 
and may the noble work of this institution, in the hands of 
those who are now charged with its oversight, and in the 
hands of their successors, continue to grow and prosper, and 
may the reputation of the city of Boston, in coming time, be 
brighter and more glorious because it is the seat of this 
institution of higher learning. (Applause.) 



At this point, the relations of the City and State to the University 
having been represented, the President alluded to the national signifi- 
cance of the institution and in response to his invitation the vast 
assembly arose, and with great enthusiasm sang two verses of the 
national hymn : " My country, 'tis of thee." Then followed an address 
entitled, " The Historical Heritage of Boston University," by President 
Warren. 



THE HISTORICAL HERITAGE OF 
BOSTON UNIVERSITY. 

By President W. F. Warren. 

Members and Friends of Boston University : — Permit me 
to improve the present moment to make an important 
announcement. It is this — that the fourth Quarter 
Centennial of Boston University will be celebrated in the 
year 1969, the one hundredth anniversary of our Charter 
Day. You and your children are cordially invited to be 
present. Notice is given thus early for the sake of reminding 
you that today's festival, the first in the new order, is not 
even one generation's remove from our beginning, and that 
consequently this is not the time for the recital of an 
accomplished history. After a century's prosperous growth 
some survey of results will perhaps be more appropriate. 
At least a sanguine mind may hope that at the close of the 
rounded century, in the presence of students and alumni and 
guests representing possibly every state of the American 
Union and every great nationality on the face of the globe, 
some honored orator of the day may pronounce some few plans 
sufficiently executed to merit men's review and judgment. 
Such anticipation is supported by the fact that even today, 
without counting an alumnus, or a guest, six-and-thirty 
American states and four-and-twenty foreign countries are 
represented in this hall. 

Today your attention is invited to what may be styled the 
historical heritage of Boston University. I have chosen this 
theme for several reasons, chiefly because it relieves the 
present speaker of every obligation to deal with things 
accomplished in the past quarter-century, and permits him to 
undertake the more pleasing task of attempting to give due 
credit to those fathers and forefathers who lived before the 
institution was born, and by whom its founding was made 
possible. 



30 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



The heritage about to be outlined includes innumerable 
items. First of all, mention may be made of the name. 
Hallowed indeed are the associations which surround as with 
a halo of glory the name of this favored city. It has taken 
the elite of the English race, and of related races, more than 
two hundred and fifty years to create that halo and to charge 
it with its steady radiance. It has taken the wisdom of great 
magistrates, the learning of illustrious scholars, the valor of 
brave generals, the eloquence of famous orators, the sagacity 
of merchant princes, the organizing genius of industrial 
captains, the zeal of ardent reformers, the benefactions of 
princely philanthropists, the devotion of matchless mothers, 
the prayers of countless saints. To particularize is as 
unnecessary as it is impossible. Every competent judge 
admits that in all the modern world there is no other city 
which is so perfectly a synonym of ethical ideals, of disciplined 
intelligence, of lofty, all-sided, courageous culture. The 
moment the sovereign state of Massachusetts bestowed that 
name upon the new University, it conferred a precious 
endowment, an inheritance of inestimable value. 

Next in our inventory should doubtless stand the precious 
memories of our immediate founders. In the charter three 
were mentioned, and of these I must first recall to your 
remembrance the one who in the pleasure of Heaven was 
the first called to vacate his seat in the new corporation. 
I allude to Hon. Lee Claflin, a senator of Massachusetts. 
He was the father of Hon. William Claflin, who after 
thrice serving as Governor of the Commonwealth, and as 
a Representative in Congress, has now for more than a 
quarter-century presided over the supreme governing body 
of this University. Fortunate father, fortunate son ! A 
grateful multitude congratulates you both this day. 

To Lee Claflin belongs the honor of having been the first 
known proposer and advocate of the founding of this 
University. How modest, how wise, how genial a man he 
was ! None that ever knew him can forget the gentle 



Historical Address by President Warren. 3 1 



strength of his benignant face. In business sagacity, in 
application, in self-restraint for noble purposes, he was 
eminent. He was one of the men whose intelligence and 
moral integrity have made Eastern Massachusetts the world's 
headquarters for the business in which he was engaged. 
For many years he was a liberal patron of learning, not only 
in his own commonwealth, but also in distant places. In 
Orangeburg, South Carolina, he planted the University which 
others gratefully named in his honor. His other charities 
were so varied and unremitting that the number of persons 
and organizations that were the beneficiaries of his fruitful 
life can never be determined by any calculus know to earth. 
A wise member of the governing board in several literary 
institutions, he saw the educational possibilities of such a 
metropolis as Boston. He counseled the utilization of them, 
and his word bore fruit. On his handsome monument in 
Pine Grove Cemetery, Milford, his sons might truthfully have 
placed the inscription : " First of the Founders of Boston 
University." 

The second of the three incorporators was Isaac Rich. 
He was the next to act, and also the next to cease from action. 
In physical stature he was not the equal of his older 
colleague, but a more symmetrical manly form, or a more 
beautiful and vivacious countenance, I have never known. 
His hand was molded with exquisite delicacy. It would have 
graced any of the earls or countesses of Warwick, from whose 
family line there is good reason to believe he was descended. 
He began life poor, but his known New England ancestry 
and kindred were eminently respectable. A kinswoman of 
his in the last century was the wife of Colonel Elisha Doane 
of Wellfleet, at the time of his death the richest man in 
Massachusetts. Another kinswoman was courted and married 
by no less a personage than Hon. Lemuel Shaw, who drafted 
the first charter of the city of Boston, and was for thirty years 
Chief Justice of Massachusetts. Robert Treat Paine, the 
honored signer of the Declaration of Independence, and John 



32 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



Rich, the contemporary forefather of Isaac Rich, married 
sisters, daughters of Rev. Samuel Treat of Eastham, who was 
the oldest son of His Excellency Robert Treat, Governor of 
Connecticut. Moreover, the grandfather of this John Rich, 
the ancestor of the whole Cape Cod division of the family, 
married the daughter of Thomas Roberts, the Royal Colonial 
Governor of New Hampshire. Of the same descent in more 
recent times was Mr. Obadiah Rich, one of the original 
incorporators of the Boston Athenaeum, who was in his day 
the greatest of American bibliographers, a special friend and 
helper of Irving and Ticknor, Prescott and Longfellow. 

Isaac Rich, the fisher-boy of Wellfleet, was the oldest of 
eleven children. He entered this city as penniless as 
Benjamin Franklin entered Philadelphia. By remarkable 
personal powers, by his diligence in business, by fidelity to 
moral and religious principle, he came to be recognized even 
by the Federal Government as standing at the head of all the 
mercantile houses in his line in the United States. Better 
than that, he became the most liberal patron of education 
that New England up to that time had ever known. To the 
Academy at Wilbraham, to the University at Middletown, and 
to the Theological Seminary in Boston, he gave with his own 
hand at least $400,000. Then he executed a will which 
bequeathed to Boston University a larger sum than at that date 
had ever been bequeathed or given by any American for the 
promotion of literary and scientific education. The memory 
of such a more than national benefactor is precious, and of 
that memory the University is the happy heir, the enduring 
custodian. 

The Hon. Jacob Sleeper was another of God's noblemen. 
He was born at Newcastle, Maine, then a part of Massachu- 
setts. From his father he should have inherited a modest 
fortune, but, orphaned at the age of fourteen, and having seen 
his property vanish before he was twenty-one, he began life 
with no resources outside himself. For some years after he 
came to Boston he was in partnership with Mr. Andrew 



Historical Address by President Warren. 33 



Carney, the public-spirited founder of Carney Hospital. It 
was in London, in 1857, that I first met him, and I was 
immediately impressed with his native dignity and grace. 
Especially noticeable were his eyes, their glance being at 
once remarkably penetrating and remarkably sympathetic. 
Like a kindly search-light, they penetrated your inmost being, 
illuminating its content for you as fully as for himself. Mr. 
Sleeper had an uncommonly rich spiritual endowment and 
spiritual experience. For a time he entertained the thought 
of studying for the Christian ministry. As it was, he was life- 
long a class-leader, and thus the lay-pastor of a great multi- 
tude of souls. Without an interval he superintended a 
Boston Sunday-school more than fifty years. He had little 
taste for political life, yet in response to what seemed to him 
the call of duty, he served his fellow-citizens as an alderman, 
as a member of the Legislature, and twice as a member of the 
Governor's Council. Twice the Legislature elected him to a 
six-year term as an Overseer of Harvard University. Suave 
in manner, distinguished in appearance, tactful in action, 
exhaustless in kindly energies, he was at the close of his 
career the man whom multitudes would have named as all in 
all the noblest example of Christian citizenship known to 
them in any city. He gave or bequeathed to Boston 
University more than a quarter of a million of dollars, but the 
memory of his gracious character and beneficent life is a 
heritage even more sacred and precious. 

Of the earliest associates of these special founders, many 
have finished their course, and at this time might well 
receive individual commemoration.* But the grateful task 
would lead us too far afield. Suffice to say that the men 
who organized the University were by heredity and training 
exceptionally competent to represent all that was distinctive 



*Three of these must not remain unmentioned, Reverends David Patten, D. D., 
J. H. Twombly, D. D., and Gilbert Haven, D. D., afterwards Bishop. Without the in- 
fluence of any one of these the plan would have failed of realization. Their relation to 
the lay founders is carefully set forth in Zion's Herald for July 20, 1898. 



34 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



or cosmopolitan, all that was historic or prophetic, in 
New England culture. Of its first Senate four had worn 
the judicial robes of Massachusetts. Of the first three 
Deans elected two were graduates of Harvard University, 
one of them a valedictorian and a litterateur of excep- 
tional brilliancy. Of the fourteen members of the original 
Law Faculty nearly every one was an eminent graduate 
of the same ancient seat of learning. Of the original 
Medical Faculty, no less than seven were Harvard graduates, 
while eleven had received their professional training in 
part or in whole in Europe. As to the Faculty of Liberal 
Arts, it is believed to have been the first in this country of 
which it could be said that every member of it had enjoyed in 
addition to American graduation the advantages of European 
study. In the Corporation were represented many of the 
historic families of New England and of Old. The man 
who offered the opening prayer at the first meeting of the 
corporation came to Boston, ancestorially, in the year 1644. 
Next to him sat another whose forefather came in 1637. In 
the veins of the man who drafted the charter was the blood of 
the great Englishman who, before Governor Winthrop ever 
reached these shores, had earned the title afterward applied to 
him, "the acknowledged father of New England colonization." 
The known lineal ancestor of another of those early trustees 
trod Boston soil and surveyed its " hill-tops three " more than 
three months before the first settlement of the town. Two 
others, at the time unaware of their mutual relationship, are 
now found to have been collateral descendants of one of the 
earliest settlers of New Hampshire, who, himself, as is shown 
by authoritative documents in England, was a direct descen- 
dant in the twenty-first generation from a Saxon lord of the 
soil, who lived before the Norman conquest in the year 1066. 
Still another was a direct descendant from a high-born lady in 
our early colony who might well be made the patroness of all 
the Colonial Dame organizations of America, since she was 
descended in two different lines from William the Conqueror, 



Historical Address by President Warren. 35 



and united in herself the lineage of ten of the sovereigns of 
Europe. To such facts as these I have never heard more than 
one of the original organizers and governors of the University 
make reference. They were men too modest and too 
democratic to boast of their lineage, however noble. But 
their blood and lineage abundantly explain why these state- 
commissioned builders of the new University for the 
furtherance and expression of the highest intellectual life in 
this metropolis felt themselves to be natural local custodians 
of whatever is best in Anglo-Saxon civilization, and considered 
the University itself a legitimate heir to all the inspiring and 
ennobling traditions of the American people. 

In passing now to more tangible assets received from our 
predecessors, it is interesting to note the wealth of historic 
association connected with several of the estates of the Uni- 
versity. For example, the first real estate ever owned by the 
Corporation consisted of two building lots on Oliver street. 
They were a part of the original homestead of Andrew Oliver, 
the last Royal Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Massa- 
chusetts. In other respects the property was of interest to 
lovers of the past. It was on the lower slope of the military 
acropolis of the ancient town, Fort Hill. On the opposite 
side of this street was the house of Judge Oliver Wendell, 
grandfather of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. In 
1776, on the same street, and but a few feet from the lots of 
the University, were the last headquarters of General Howe, 
British commander at the battle of Bunker Hill, and one whose 
fame is not likely to perish so long as Boston celebrates 
Evacuation Day. Another next neighbor was Harrison 
Gray, treasurer of the colony, and grandfather of Harrison 
Gray Otis, the distinguished third mayor of our city. Indeed, 
one of the lots was once, for a time, a part of the possessions 
of the latter. Here also lived Chief Justice Theophilus 
Parsons, and among other notables Colonel T. H. Perkins, 
chief patron of the Perkins Institution for the Blind. It is 
certainly pleasant to have in the first real estate possession of 



2,6 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



the University a memorial, not only of Lieutenant-Governor 
Oliver, but also of his great-grandfather, Thomas Oliver, an 
original elder in the First Church of Boston, and the next- 
door neighbor of Governor Winthrop in the days when what 
is now Spring Lane was the boundary betwixt their home- 
steads on the street now named for the father of our country. 

A few weeks ago, at an advanced age, the last of a family of 
four — one brother and three sisters — died in Cambridge. 
None of the four had ever married, and long sickness had 
reduced the family resources, so that at the end there was but 
a small remnant left for final testamentary disposition by Mary, 
the last of the sisters. She was the sole survivor of her 
branch of this ancient Royal Lieutenant Governor's line. It 
was a touching disclosure when the other day I received from 
the clerk of the probate court the announcement that with 
her dying hand this last of her line had bequeathed to the 
University the sum of fifty dollars for the benefit of some 
worthy student that might be in need. It was as if, in this 
quarter-centennial year, Elder Thomas Oliver of 1630, through 
the vanishing hand of a far-off descendant, had laid upon 
Boston University a precious obligation to perpetuate and to 
guard forever his fading memory. 

The Oliver name suggests another connection of the 
University with first things in American history. In the year 
1633, in company with the redoubtable Governor Wouter 
VanTwiller, Reverend Everardus Bogardus came to New 
Amsterdam, on the island of Manhattan, and became the first 
pastor of that Dutch town. His marriage with Anneke Jans 
eventually brought to Trinity Church the landed property 
which became the basis of its enormous wealth and prestige. 
His lineal descendant, General Robert Bogardus, held a high 
military position in New York in the war of 18 12. A grand- 
daughter of this general, who was also a relative of Presi- 
dent Woolsey and Professsor Salisbury of Yale University 
and of other distinguished families — a woman of rare talent 
and spirituality — believed herself called to prepare for the 



Historical Address by President Warren. 37 



Christian ministry. She had just been graduated from Rut- 
gers Female College, where she had carried away no less than 
five collegiate- honors. Her brother, a rector in a Protestant 
Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, like other members of the 
family, was opposed to her carrying out a conviction at that 
time so extraordinary, and to relieve them as far as possible 
of any unpleasant connection with what they felt would be an 
annoying notoriety, she dropped the family name and adopted 
Oliver, the name of an aunt. First she entered Oberlin 
College in the Theological Department, but finding there at 
that date some things that seemed to her to imply unreasonable 
discrimination against women as women, she wrote to the 
authorities of Boston University, and being satisfied with 
their reply, came to New England, and in 1873 — just twenty- 
five years ago, entered our School of Theology. She pursued 
her course with great interest and success, and in 1876 was 
honorably promoted to the baccalaureate degree in theology 
with her class. 

So far as known, this lady, Miss Anna Oliver, was the first 
woman in the history of the world to whom a university ever 
gave the privilege of studying the Bible and its themes as 
scholars study them, and to whom, in simple justice, without 
flourish of trumpet, it then gave the jura et privilegia of a 
theological graduate. It was fitting that this first illustration 
of consistent "university freedom" should have been given in 
Boston, and especially fitting that it should have been given 
in the first university ever organized, logically and from the 
start, on the principle of no discrimination in privilege on the 
ground of sex. Until her lamented death this modest but 
brave representative of Dominus Everardus Bogardus proved 
herself an effective minister of saving sweetness and light, an 
honor to her immediate family and to her notable ancestry. 

The first time Isaac Rich ever took the present speaker to 
his home, he was living at No. 4 Winthrop place. This was, 
perhaps, a hundred feet from Summer street, on what is now 
Devonshire. Next door to him at No. 3 lived Rufus Choate. 



38 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



Later Mr. Rich bought of Mr. Choate his home, and later 
still purchased of Daniel Webster his spacious house just 
around the corner on Summer street. Both of these historic 
estates — the homes of Choate and of Webster — were a part 
of the property subsequently bequeathed to Boston University, 
and thus there came to us from this source two more precious 
landmarks of the city, two more of the memorials of its 
famous men. 

At the date to which I have referred, by some ordering 
which I have never understood, I chanced to be the very 
juvenile pastor of both Isaac Rich and Jacob Sleeper. In 
those days Summer street was still adorned with rows of 
horse-chestnut trees, with fresh green lawns, and with the 
quiet mansions of many of the first families of the town. At 
No. 53, on the south side of the street, dwelt Mr. Sleeper. 
Next door stood the Ellis mansion, from which went forth into 
the world Dr. Rufus Ellis, the seventeenth pastor of the First 
Church, and his brother, Dr. George Ellis, historian, anti- 
quarian, divine. Exactly opposite Mr. Sleeper's was the 
house of Edward Everett ; close by were the homes of George 
Bancroft, Nathaniel Bowditch, Daniel Webster, and the 
house in which Ralph Waldo Emerson was born. About all 
these places there already lingered yet earlier memories. 
Many, if not all of them, stood upon portions of the once 
confiscated estate of Sir William Pepperell, grandson of the 
captor of Louisburg, or on the grounds of the Russell mansion 
in which in the days of the Revolution General Heath enter- 
tained D'Estaing, Pulaski, and Burgoyne. Those homes of 
elegance and of rich traditions in Summer street have long 
since vanished, but the granite store bequeathed to us by Mr. 
Sleeper covers the spot made sacred by his beautiful 
hospitalities and by these precious memories of more distant 
years. We do well to prize it, for, as Lowell sings, — 

" the place 
Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace 
Beyond mere earth ; some sweetness of their fames 
Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace." 



Historical Address by President Warren. 39 



One church in the heart of Boston has among its founda- 
tion-stones a fragment of Plymouth Rock. I know of but 
one which enjoys this distinction. In this church, in the 
year 1839, on the 24th and 25th of April, there was held 
a convention of an unusual character. It consisted of 
delegates called from every New England state. Their 
business was to make arrangements for the establish- 
ment, in or near Boston, of a new educational institu- 
tion. The men there assembled were intense, indigenous 
New Englanders, but deeply dissatisfied with the dominant 
ideas and teaching of the New England of their time. Like 
the transcendentalists of this same period, they represented 
a world-view which was idealistic in essence and irrepressibly 
reformatory in expression. Point by point they would have 
agreed with Margaret Fuller in the criticisms she has left on 
record as to the pulpit teachings of that day, even in the 
churches that called themselves liberal. With Emerson and 
Alcott they craved and advocated a first-hand knowledge of 
spiritual realities. Mr. Frothingham, in his work on 
" Transcendentalism in New England," has summed up the 
secret of the force of that movement in these words : " A 
belief in the Living God in the Soul, faith in immediate 
inspiration, in boundless possibility and in unimaginable 
good." Like faith and like hope were the soul of that 
convention of 1839. The time was one of extraordinary 
intellectual and social effervescence. Only six years had 
passed since the immemorial union of church and state had 
been dissolved. The old types of teaching, both orthodox 
and heterodox, were rapidly disintegrating. The popular 
excitement over Mr. Garrison and his Liberator was at its 
height. The socialism of Robert Owen and Fanny Wright 
was in the air, and the Brook Farm experiment was soon to 
be made. Less than one year earlier Ralph Waldo Emerson 
had delivered his memorable Divinity School address, and 
closed his career as a clergyman. Theodore Parker had just 
been reading with Dr. Channing, Strauss' " Life of Jesus," but 



40 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



had not yet been disowned by the Unitarian brotherhood. 
The members of the Transcendental Club were already 
planning their famous organ, The Dial, and the first number 
was to appear the following year. The newspapers by their 
ridicule had but a short time before brought to an end the 
idyllic school conducted by Bronson Alcott and Margaret 
Fuller. The Convention of which I spoke believed that the 
time had fully come for a new type of education in Boston — 
a type which should provide a new race of teachers not only 
for New England, but also for many lands. Accordingly, 
before the adjournment, the delegates organized a permanent 
association to promote the early establishment of a training- 
school of public religious teachers, one which should repre- 
sent what they considered a broader and profounder 
conception of humanity and of the divine purpose in the 
history of humanity. 

Seven or eight years after this a singular event occurred in 
the capital of New Hampshire. In the center of a green 
campus of about one and one-half acres, in the beautiful city 
of Concord, there then stood a building of uncommon interest 
in its historic associations. It was that in which in the year 
1784 the constitution of the State of New Hampshire was 
discussed and adopted. This was the more historic from the 
fact that New Hampshire was the first of the thirteen 
emancipated colonies to adopt a written constitution incorpor- 
ating the results of the War of Independence. The building 
was also the one in which, on the 21st of June, 1788, another 
state convention ratified the Federal Constitution. The vote 
by which this was done was one of intense interest to each of 
the thirteen states. All were feverishly watching the out- 
come, for it had been provided that the proposed Federal 
Constitution should take effect and acquire force of law so 
soon as ratified by nine of the states. New Hampshire was 
the ninth. In the walls of this building, therefore, the vote 
was given which transformed an aggregation of separate and 



Historical Address by President Warren. 41 



discordant states into a henceforth forever indissolubly united 
nation. 

Now the building in question was a house of worship of 
the traditional New England order. It belonged to the First 
Congregational Church of the city of Concord. In 1847 its 
owners were about to move into a new and more modern 
sanctuary. What should they do with the old — the most 
historic structure in the state ? They considered various 
suggestions. At length they heard of the School projected by 
that New England Convention in Boston in 1839; learned 
that after a struggling existence in Vermont it was now 
seeking an independent incorporation and home. With a rare 
catholicity of mind and generosity of heart, these good men 
tendered to that School, not only their building, but also a 
handsome sum of money to aid in adapting it to the new 
purpose. This noble offer was gratefully accepted, and thus 
it came to pass that the first home of the first Arminian 
Theological Seminary in America was the free and cordial gift 
of a church and parish of Calvinists. 

Twenty years later Lee Claflin, David Patten, Gilbert 
Haven and other far-sighted friends of the Seminary were 
convinced that it could never acquire its due strength and 
wield its proper influence unless brought back to its original 
birthplace, and given a home in Boston. The New Hampshire 
Legislature consented, and the Legislature of Massachusetts 
promptly prepared the way. Generous friends began a new 
and more adequate endowment. The removal was affected 
under circumstances honorable to Boston Christianity and 
profitable to the School. With characteristic generosity the 
corporation of Harvard University sent a committee to invite 
the Seminary to locate in Cambridge, promising important 
advantages in connection with the University, its libraries and 
other collections. In two or three places, a little outside the 
heart of the city, the gift of a free site was offered by other 
friends. Foremost representatives of American education 
cheerfully responded to invitations to become lecturers in 



42 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



connection with the reorganized faculty. President McCosh 
of Princeton, just called from Scotland, gave a course of 
lectures before the School and its friends, and with such 
success that in a single week three successively larger 
auditoriums had to be provided. President Woolsey of Yale 
gave a similar course ; so also did President Robinson of 
Brown University, President Harris of Bowdoin College, 
President Anderson of Rochester, Chancellor Haven of the 
University of Michigan, President Mark Hopkins of Williams. 
Such a catholicity of teaching in connection with a theological 
seminary had never before been seen. It was a noble fulfill- 
ment of the hopes and aspirations of 1839. 

When the School was thus brought back to Boston, the 
president, vice-president, and treasurer of its corporation were, 
respectively, Lee Claflin, Isaac Rich and Jacob Sleeper. It 
was only natural that when two years later they became the 
incorporators of Boston University, they should have desired 
to see their Seminary become the first department of the new 
and more comprehensive University organization. The 
authorities of the church consented, the Legislatures passed 
an enabling act, and thus in the year 1871 the hopeful child 
of 1839 became the happy mother of new collegiate and 
professional faculties. From the beginning she has recipro- 
cated the generous interest and service of other branches of 
the Christian Church, and finds today that she has educated 
ministers for no less than sixteen different denominations of 
Christians. In the heritage which she brought to the 
University treasury was included some thirty acres of land, 
which once belonged to the tenth signer of the first church 
covenant ever formed in Boston, Mr. Aspinwall — land which 
had remained in the possession of his descendants in Brook- 
line until it came into her possession. Here again the 
heritage of the University takes backward hold on Boston's 
first beginning. 

In the year 1869, our charter year, the Old State House at 
the head of State street was not the sacred historical museum 



Historical Address by President Warren. 43 



which most fortunately it has since become. In those days 
it was occupied in all its stories for business purposes, and on 
the second floor, in rooms Nos. 36 and 37, was the office of 
the first secretary of the trustees of Boston University, Mr. 
Perry. It is pleasant to remember that in that historic 
building, not far from the balcony from which the accession 
of George the Fourth was proclaimed to his American subjects, 
the records of the first meetings of our corporation were 
engrossed and placed in custody for future generations of 
Bostonians. The location of the office of the first treasurer 
of the University, Mr. Sleeper, was hardly less appropriate. 
It was in the second story of the " Old Corner Book-store," 
the birth-house of James Freeman Clarke, and, according to 
the antiquarians, the oldest brick house now standing in 
Boston. The first meeting of the University corporation 
for organization was in a rear room in the second story of No. 
11 Cornhill. Directly opposite the windows stood the old 
Brattle-square Church in which Washington worshipped in 
1789, and Lafayette in 1824. It was the home church of 
General Joseph Warren, of Governor Hancock, Governor 
Bowdoin, and a long line of Boston notables. At the time of 
our gathering for that first meeting, the church still bore high 
up in its front wall, with fitting pride, the half-exposed British 
cannon-ball which struck the tower the night before the final 
evacuation of the town. It was pleasant to begin the organiza- 
tion of the new University within a few feet of pews which 
had belonged to such patriotic worshippers, and hard by a 
pulpit in which Buckminster, and Palfrey, and Edward 
Everett, had stood as pastors ; all the more, since the pastor 
at that very hour, the last of his illustrious line, was in warm 
and outspoken sympathy with every educational idea and 
principle for which the University was soon to stand. 

Speaking of churches and of the historic heritage of the 
University, one may further mention that Isaac Rich pur- 
chased the first Roman Catholic Cathedral of the city, 
situated at the corner of Devonshire and Franklin streets, and 



44 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



utilized the site as an investment for the benefit of the future 
University. He also bought the last of the three successive 
meeting-houses of the Friends in Boston, and on Milton place 
our property still covers its site. Two other church buildings 
came later into the hands of the University. One of them was 
that of the Baptist society on Somerset street, to whose final 
pastor, Dr. Neale, was given the credit of breaking the long 
dead-lock at the State House, and of thereby making Charles 
Sumner a Senator of the United States. The other was the 
Mount Vernon Congregational house of worship on Ashburton 
place, in which Evangelist Dwight L. Moody was converted 
and in which Mr. Durant, the founder of Wellesley College, 
began his Christian life. In it, also, were held, year after year 
and decade after decade, the farewell meetings of American 
Board missionaries departing to their far-off fields of labor. 
All these memories, sacredly cherished, are portions of the 
vast as yet uncatalogued historical collections of Boston 
University. 

Another thing there is which must not be forgotten in this 
enumeration of historic inheritances. In the year 1848, just 
fifty years ago, a movement that had been initiated some three 
years before reached the point of crystallization, and an 
application was made to the Legislature for a charter. The 
object of the petitioners was to provide for another new 
departure in education. The petition was duly referred to 
the legislative committee on education, and this committee 
returned a favorable report. It is curious to note that of that 
small committee of seven, one was the father of the present 
president of Harvard University, and a second the father of 
General Walker, late president of the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology. Supported by such men and their colleagues, 
it is not strange that the petitioners readily obtained the 
desired charter. The object of the thus created corporation 
was to provide for the medical education of suitably qualified 
women. As just intimated, it was decidely a new departure. 
At that date there was not a medically educated woman in 



Historical Address by President Warren. 45 



America ; nowhere in the world was there a college for the 
training of such. Instruction was at once begun, but only 
with the narrowest resources. Indeed, for the next twenty- 
five years the best energies of the corporation and of its friends 
were taxed to provide the money needed for the barest main- 
tenance of the work undertaken. Only the most advanced 
minds seemed capable of appreciating the appeal. To the great 
mass of citizens, especially those of wealth, the idea of fitting 
women for medical practice seemed unutterably wild and 
fatuous. On this account the hundreds of names preserved 
to us as members, life-members, or patrons of the pioneer 
organization, or as trustees and annual supporters of the 
College, have in these day a unique interest. They give a 
kind of municipal and national peerage, representing the 
progressive spirits of fifty years ago, the intellectual 
aristocracy of the city and the nation. In this roll of honor 
stand the names of Horace Mann, Francis Wayland, Calvin 
E. Stowe, Wendell Phillips, James Freeman Clarke, Charles 
Francis Adams, Peleg W. Chandler, Theodore Parker, Lee 
Claflin, Josiah Quincy, Cyrus A. Bartol, William I. Bowditch, 
Isaac Rich, George W. Blagden, Ezra S. Gannett, Samuel E. 
Sewall, Rollin H. Neale, Robert G. Shaw, Henry Wadsworth 
Longfellow, Jacob Sleeper, Alpheus Hardy, Augustus 
Hemenway, David Snow, William Claflin, Octavius B. Froth- 
ingham, Alexander H. Vinton, Amos A. Lawrence, and 
others of like character. Of the contributing women, 
hundreds in number, I will mention but a few : The poetess, 
Mrs. L. H. Sigourney of Hartford, Miss Sarah J. Hale of 
Philadelphia, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Chief Justice 
Lemuel Shaw, Mrs. Dr. Charles Lowell, mother of James 
Russell Lowell, Mrs. Francis Wayland, Mrs. Mary B. Claflin, 
Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Miss Katherine E. Beecher, Mrs. 
Henry W. Longfellow. Year after year with their modest 
contributions appeared these names, and others from various 
towns and cities of New England, and of states as distant as 



46 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



Missouri and Louisiana. The enlightening and liberalizing 
effect of the movement was of national and more than 
national significance. 

In 1854 the Massachusetts Legislature, recognizing the 
useful work of the institution, voted $1,000 a year for five 
years as a scholarship fund. The next year it voted a new 
appropriation of $10,000 to the College. Even in the Legis- 
lature of Maine the lower house voted an appropriation of 
$2,000. Governors or ex-governors of all the New England 
States served upon its board of trustees. With the aid of the 
city, which gave it land at one-half its value, and by the help 
of certain special bequests and gifts of friends, it completed, 
though greatly embarrassed by debt, a college building. 

The panic of 1857, and the soon following Civil War, and 
finally the death of the prime promoter of the whole move- 
ment, Samuel Gregory, A. M., M. D., at length brought the 
enterprise to the brink of bankruptcy. In the year 1873-74, 
in compliance with a new act of the Legislature, accepted by 
the respective governing boards, the brave but hopelessly 
burdened institution was made over to Boston University and 
merged in its newly organized and greatly enlarged co-educa- 
tional medical department. In this way, the oldest medical 
college for women in the history of civilization became a part 
of our goodly inheritance. Sacredly have we guarded the 
mural tablet which commemorates in the College the service 
of Samuel Gregory ; sacredly will we preserve the records of 
those modest gifts from many of the nation's noblest families. 
The gifts were modest, but they educated the country and the 
world. They made possible new and stronger colleges and 
schools in other states and nations. They made it possible 
for a Johns Hopkins University to receive, in the very next 
generation, the gift of $100,000 from the hand of one woman, 
to secure the opening of its department of medicine to women 
and men alike. 

The story of financial struggle just narrated easily intro- 
duces a needful statement that the historic inheritance of the 



Historical Address by President Warren. 47 



University is not wholly of the strengthening and helpful 
sort. Its memories are not all golden. Dark have been 
many of our days, anxious our nights. Conflagrations of 
historic magnitude have devoured our substance, panics have 
ruined well-grounded hopes, death has come untimely. On 
one sad occasion, by formal vote of the trustees, the very life 
of the College of Liberal Arts was made to depend on one 
man's cablegram from Europe. Fortunately that man was 
the man for the hour, and so by the courageous faith and 
help flashed to us under the sea, the college was saved. The 
cablegram was from — William Claflin. 

It is instructive to remember that, at that very time of 
peril, a professor in the University, poor in this world's goods 
but rich in inventive power, was conducting in the night hours 
experiments which soon after resulted in adding untold 
millions to the wealth of the world. Would that the owners 
of this new wealth would remember the still existing 
necessities of the University in which their great fortunes 
were made possible, and give it the resources required for 
further experiments ! At the Exposition Universelle at 
Paris, in the year 1878, the professor to whom I have alluded 
was awarded the highest distinction there given by the 
International Board of Award, the Grand Prize of Honor. 
The name of the man thus honored in the presence of the 
whole civilized world was Alexander Graham Bell, the 
inventor of the Bell Telephone. 

There is a tradition that when, in 1844, The Dial suspended 
publication there remained in the hands of its editors, among 
other unpublished contributions, one calling for the early 
establishment of an educational institution for the propagation 
of the new Transcendental philosophy, a University in the 
city of Boston. From which of the Transcendentalists of that 
day this proposal came, I have never heard, but it is gratifying 
to know, and to pass the knowledge down to posterity, that 
Emerson welcomed the new University when it really came 
with genuine hospitality. He not only visited its halls 



48 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



repeatedly, but also lectured before its students. On his 
seventy-seventh birthday he received in his house at 
Concord a company of the Alumni of the University with a 
friendliness and cordiality which will never be forgotten. 
Mr. Alcott, too, manifested a hearty interest, and for ten 
years served as an official visitor, ending his service only with 
his life. Colonel Higginson, in articles in public journals, 
repeatedly, and without solicitation commended the new 
institution for the unprecedented justice of its principles and 
for the catholicity of its administration. 

The University can never be too thankful that its birth was 
sufficiently early to enable it to receive the benedictions 
of these great souled optimists of America's intellectual 
morning, and to share in the inspiring sociological tasks 
which they had set before them. It is equally gratifying 
that it came in time to hear in its halls the voices of 
Whittier and of Holmes. So far as known to me, the 
last public readings from his poems ever given by Mr. 
Holmes were in our chapel in Sleeper Hall. Mr. James 
T. Fields was a friend most generous, and freely gave to the 
institution some of the last work of his life. Hudson, the best 
American Shaksperean of his time, held for six years one of 
the chairs of instruction. The good-will of Aldrich and of 
Howells has been repeatedly shown in ways unmistakable. 
We were in time to announce in the original program of 1873 
the first woman ever associated with a college faculty in New 
England — a distinguished friend of George Eliot, already 
almost as well known in Old England as in New, Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps. We were in time to hear at the opening of 
our Medical Department an original poem read by its author — 
an Athenian in the eyes of the Greeks, and an Athenian in 
the eyes of Americans — the author of the " Battle Hymn of 
the Republic." 

But our time is spent. I can only add that of all the 
incorporeal hereditamenta of our favored University, none are 
in reality so precious as those which it shares with every other. 



Historical Address by President Warren. 49 



Faith in the truth, the spirit of absolute loyalty to all 
revelations of truth and duty, delight in the author and ground 
of all reality — these are the supreme treasures of all true 
scholars and teachers, the supreme treasures of the kingdom 
universal. From founders and legislators possessed of these 
we have received our commission. In their trustful, 
courageous, devout, expectant spirit the University has thus 
far labored. Its immediate founders believed in the Christian 
world-view, and desired to help forward the ideals of the 
Christian faith. They belonged to the Holy Catholic Church. 
Believing in that supreme estimate placed upon humanity by 
Him who left heaven to take on our human nature, they 
believed in the uttermost possibilities of redeemed souls, and 
in the uttermost perfectibility of the human race. They 
belonged to the great branch of the Christian Church which 
has never repudiated the name of Perfectionists, the great 
branch, which repudiating all ancient dogmas declaring 
hereditary guilt, has placed in the fore-front of its confession 
of faith the Saviour's explicit teaching respecting redeemed 
infancy in every age and among every people, " Of such is the 
kingdom of heaven." The pedagogical significance and scope 
of these peculiarities is beyond computation ; yet even in these 
will we not here glory. Enough that from this, or any other 
source, we draw such inspiration as from generation to 
generation shall entitle us to a place among the great world- 
schools in which distinctively Christian manliness is bred 
and fitted for ever-great ening tasks of Christian civilization. 
To this work we this day solemnly dedicate ourselves anew ; 
to this, earnestly invoking God's good help, we will be faithful 
so long as 

" Twice each day the flowing sea 
Takes Boston in its arms." 



EVENING SESSION. 

The Honorable Alden Speare, Vice-President of the 
Corporation, Presiding. 



THE CHAIRMAN. 

The divine blessing will now be invoked by the Rev. E. 
Winchester Donald, Rector of Trinity Church. 

DR. DONALD. 

Almighty and everlasting God, whose blessed Son came 
among us that He might destroy the power of darkness and make 
us the children of light, and who art alone the only true light 
that cometh into the world, lighten our darkness, we beseech 
Thee, with the full and abiding knowledge of Thy dear Son, 
and of His gospel. Send Thy blessing upon all sincere effort 
to train the young in intelligence, virtue and piety. Bless all 
schools and colleges of sound learning and Christian education, 
and especially the university in whose name we gather here 
tonight, and make them instruments in Thy hand for training 
many for Thy service, and for the good of their fellowmen. 
Look with special favor upon all efforts to establish and main- 
tain schools of learning where the truths of the gospel shall 
be ever honored as supreme, the precepts and ordinances of 
Thy dear Son be counted the beginning of wisdom, and all 
their members be taught of God. Endue the officers and 
teachers with a high sense of their stewardship, and with 
wisdom, faith and zeal, patterned after Him who was the 
teacher come from God. Stir up the hearts of parents and 
friends to understand aright their responsibilities in reference 
to the Christian training of those entrusted to them, and lead 
them to wise and dutiful cooperation in the encouragement 
and enlargement of the institutions established for such train- 
ing and culture. 

Illuminate the minds, purify the hearts, and fashion the 
lives of the students so that they may go forth a noble host, 



52 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



made ready and consecrated for large and abiding service and 
power. Bless eyerywhere those who are striving for a 
Christian education amidst the hindrances of poverty and 
friendlessness, and raise up friends, and strengthen wise 
agencies to aid their noble endeavor. 

Pour out Thy spirit from on high, and sanctify all minds 
and hearts to faithful, acceptable service here and Thy blessed 
kingdom hereafter. And O, Almighty God, the Lord of 
heaven and earth, who in former times didst lead our fathers 
forth into a wealthy place, give Thy grace, we beseech Thee, 
to us their children, that we may always prove ourselves a 
people mindful of Thy favor and glorying to do Thy will. 

Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning and 
pure manners. Defend our liberties, preserve our unity, save 
us from all violence, discord and confusion, from pride, 
arrogancy and every evil way. Fashion into one happy 
people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds 
and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those whom 
we have intrusted in Thy name with the authority of 
governance, to the end that wars may cease and there be 
peace at home, and that we keep a place among the nations of 
the earth. 

In all time of our prosperity fill our hearts with devout 
thankfulness, and in the day of trouble suffer not our trust in 
Thee to fail. And O, Almighty God, who hast in all ages 
showed forth Thy power and mercy m the preservation of 
Thy Holy Catholic Church, and in the protection of all who 
put their trust in Thee, grant that the people of this land 
which Thou hast so blessed, may show forth their thanks and 
praise for all Thy mercies by loving obedience to all Thy laws. 
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

THE CHAIRMAN. 

Ladies and Gentlemen: — After the exhaustive and able 
address of the President of the University, no extended 



Telegram from the Hon. John D. Long. 53 



remarks are required from the Trustees, which would only 
detain you from listening to the interesting addresses upon 
our programme. 

It is my privilege, on behalf of the Trustees, to extend to 
you, graduates, alumni and guests, our cordial and hearty 
greeting and welcome to this, our twenty-fifth annual reunion 
and quarter centennial of the founding of Boston University. 
I shall attempt no extended eulogies upon the several honored 
gentlemen who are to address you upon the topics of the 
programme. It would be needless to announce to this audi- 
ence the deep and abiding interest of President McKinley in 
all things that make for the uplifting of his countrymen ; and 
among the instrumentalities that contribute to this end, he 
deems the higher institutions of learning of the first importance. 
When I had the honor to invite him to be present on this 
occasion, he assured me that he would accept the invitation 
with much pleasure if public duties would permit. At a later 
interview, when it appeared that he could not be present, he 
expressed a desire that Secretary Long should take his place, 
which the latter very readily agreed to do, if public duties 
would permit. While they are not here tonight we hold them 
both in all the higher estimation ! (Applause.) 
{See foot-note below.) 

We esteem it a happy circumstance that Rev. Dr. Gordon, 
pastor of the New Old South Church, whose predecessor was 
a lecturer in our Theological School, and who is to speak in 
behalf of the clergy, is a native of Great Britain, as the two 
great Anglo-Saxon nations never were more closely drawn 
together than they are at this time. I present to you the 
Rev. Dr. Gordon. (Applause.) 

Mr. Long, very thoughtfully, and at a timely hour, sent the following 
telegram intended for the meeting, but unfortunately it reached the 
Chairman too late for presentation ; — 

Sincerely regretting that I cannot be with you in person tonight I send my -warmest 
congratulations to Boston University on the celebration of her Quarter Centennial and 
my best wishes for continued success and wide-spread usefulness. 

JOHN D. LONG. 



54 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



THE REV. GEORGE A. GORDON, S. T. D. 
Pastor of the Old South Church. 

Members of Boston University, Ladies and Gentlemen : — 
I am a citizen of Boston (applause), and I am to speak for 
Boston University in one aspect only, one relation, and that 
the relation which the university sustains to the profession 
which I have the honor to represent here this evening. The 
first duty of a minister, when he begins his work in a given 
community, is to take into account not only the forces 
which are opposed to him, but also the forces which are 
in alliance with him. In the undertaking in which the United 
States is at present engaged, the survey of the international 
environment was a first duty ; and the discovery that Great 
Britain was solidly with us has been a source of great strength 
and much satisfaction (applause), both to the government and 
the people of the United States. 

The ministers of Boston, in surveying their environment, 
and finding several things in it that are rather questionable — 
saloons and newspapers and things like that — (laughter) are 
glad to find in it Boston University (applause and laughter). 
Boston University stands for one universal interest of man- 
kind, and the ministers of Boston, of all denominations, stand 
for another equally universal interest. I have wondered how 
I could relate these two without offending either. I have 
thought of them as joining hands, as one might imagine 
Alexander and Caesar — both would be conquerors of the 
whole world — but I did not think that perhaps would do, 
because that would imply that they might have a question at 
issue between themselves. Then I thought of them as 
Alexander conquering the world by force of reason, as well as 
of arms, and the Greek culture following in the wake of the 
victorious armies. That did not seem to go very well either. 
Then I thought of them as the industry of the modern world 
covering the whole earth, and opening a path for civilization 
in the wake of the ships of the world. That seemed a little 



Address by the Rev. George A. Gordon. 55 



better. Finally, I concluded that perhaps the best image of 
their relationship was supplied by English history, where the 
single crown of sovereignty was worn by William and Mary 
(applause), one crown worn by two, united in purpose, united 
in spirit, differing in capacity, differing in function, and whose 
united life could serve the empire and the world better than 
either separate from the other. That is an indorsement at the 
same time of co-education. (Applause and laughter.) 

Boston University is more and more deserving of her share 
of the crown. Let us hope that the ministers of Boston will 
equally well deserve their share. 

In the second place Boston University reminds the 
ministers of the city that knowledge is the best friend, not of 
religion, but of the Christian religion ; that the worst enemy 
of Christianity is ignorance. (Applause.) The great words 
in our religion are these: "God is light and in Him is no 
darkness at all." He is "the father of Lights," and the 
Master of the Christian world thus described Himself : "I 
am the light of the world ; he that followeth Me shall not 
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." And the 
function of His disciples, according to His own description, 
is, " To let their light so shine " that men may be guided by 
beholding it to the source of all in God. Christianity is the 
religion of light, and every institution that stands for 
knowledge, for truth, for science, for the conquest of the world 
by reason, in so far as it is true to its ideal, is the best possible 
friend of Christianity. 

There have been heresies in consequence of universities, 
but they have been nothing to the heresies that have pro- 
ceeded from prejudice, from mental stagnation, and from 
sheer colossal ignorance. (Applause.) We are thankful, we 
ministers in the city, that we have an institution in the city 
that reminds us of the central feature of our religion, that 
reminds us that the torch of Knowlege easily blends with 
the torch of Christian faith, which calls upon us to raise all 
our professional standards and eliminate from our ranks, as 



56 Boston University Qtiarter Centennial. 



incapacitated for service, men governed by prejudice, men in 
the swamps of intellectual stagnation, men who are too lazy 
to work. 

Finally, we are all anxious for as many people to preach 
to as we can possibly have, and if any institution adds a 
thousand or twelve hundred likely people to talk to, it is an 
amazing encouragement to us, and especially when they are 
young. There is very little use in preaching to old people, 
for they have become used to it, like the man who was afraid 
of thunder in youth, but it had thundered so long he had 
become accustomed to it. We are thus made in a way to 
share the privilege and responsibility of the university, and we 
rejoice that the young men who are here for the highest 
purposes of education are scattered through the city each 
Sunday, so that the ministers of the city may be in a true 
sense chaplains to the university ; and such I am sure they 
would wish me to represent them to be, in their spirit, in their 
sympathy, in their congratulations, in their desire for the 
largest, the broadest, and the best future of this noble 
institution. 

These then are the special points that I mention tonight 
for my brethren in the ministry. We love to recognize this 
institution as serving a universal interest of mankind, and we 
meet it with another, that together with it we may claim the 
sovereignty of the world. We rejoice to be reminded of our 
best friend and our worst enemy, — to be continually called 
upon to revise our standards, and to put forth our best efforts. 
And we rejoice again that we are invited to be partakers in its 
great office, to share in its mighty privilege, and to serve 
in the capacity of chaplains to the university. 

Artists tell us that from the remains of some splendid 
Grecian temple we may reconstruct the whole, and imagine 
what a glorious thing it must have been, from simply behold- 
ing one fundamental and exquisite aspect of it. And I ask 
you, through this single relation which I have mentioned 
tonight of the ministers of Boston to Boston University, to go 



Address by the Hon. Walbridge A. Field. 57 



forth and think of all the relations, and what these twenty-five 
years have been in service to our city and to the whole 
country. 

I bring to the faculty, to the president, to the corporation, 
to all the graduates, and to all the friends of the institution, 
from my own profession, the heartiest congratulations and 
supreme good wishes. (Applause.) 



THE CHAIRMAN. 

Order is heaven's first law, but order cannot be maintained 
unless the acts be justly executed by law. We are very 
happy to present to you this evening to speak for the law 
profession the Chief Justice of the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts, — Justice Field. 

HON. WALBRIDGE A. FIELD, LL.D. 

It is remarkable that the colleges and universities in the 
United States until comparatively recent times have had so 
little to do with the professional education of lawyers. In 
England the universities originally were largely under the 
control of ecclesiastics who might have had some knowledge of 
the Canon law and of the civil or Roman law, but they had 
little knowledge of the common law, which was mainly of 
indigenous growth. The common lawyers were jealous 
guardians of their own system, and took into their hands the 
education of barristers and sergeants-at-law. 

The first law school in the United States is said to have 
been the Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut. Before that 
time, in 1779, a chair of law had been founded at William and 
Mary College, and in 1790 Judge Wilson gave law lectures in 
the University of Pennsylvania. In 1795 James Kent 
delivered a course of lectures in Columbia College, but they 
were not continued beyond the first year. In 1823 he was 
appointed a professor of law in Columbia College, and 



58 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



delivered a course of lectures which are the foundations of his 
famous commentaries. But the Law School connected with 
Columbia College was not established until 1858. 

The Harvard Law School was established in 18 17, and is 
said to have been the first law school in the United States 
connected with a college or university and authorized to confer 
degrees. From 1839 to 1870, the course of study was for two 
years or four terms, the degree of Bachelor of Laws being 
conferred upon all persons who were members of the school 
for eighteen months, or three terms. There were no examina- 
tions for the degree until 1871, and none for admission to the 
school until 1877. The present three years' course was 
established in 1877. In 1896 the rule was established that 
none but graduates of approved colleges and persons qualified 
to enter the senior class of Harvard College should be 
admitted as regular students. 

In 1895 there were about yy law schools in the United 
States, and more than three-fourths of them were connected 
with colleges or universities. At that time the number of 
students in the Boston University Law School stood eighth 
on the list. Of these law schools forty had a course of two 
years, and seventeen of three years. Of the remainder I have 
no information, but they were not law schools of distinction. 
The number of students in the law schools in 1889-90, so far 
as ascertained, was 4,518; in 1895-96, it was 9,607. The 
number had more than doubled in six years. 

There seems to have been a period in our history when in 
some of the states it was thought that almost anybody could 
be a lawyer — that a knowledge of law, like reading and writ- 
ing, came by nature — but the civil war gave a useful lesson 
of the advantages of thorough professional training, and after 
the termination of the war many attempts were made to 
secure better instruction for lawyers. The School of Law 
of Boston University was opened in October, 1872, with Mr. 
George S. Hillard as Dean. In 1874-5, Mr - N. St. John 



Address by the Hon. Walbridge A. Field. 59 



Green was made Acting Dean, and upon his death, in 1876, 
Mr. Edmund H. Bennett was made Dean. He continued to 
hold this office until he died, in January, 1898. 

To Judge Bennett more than to any other person is due the 
successful history of the school. The school opened with a 
distinguished body of lecturers, among whom, to name only 
those who have died, were Mr. Bennett, Dwight Foster, 
N. St. John Green, George S. Hillard, Otis P. Lord, Henry 
W. Paine, Robert C. Pitman, Charles T. Russell, Benjamin F. 
Thomas and Francis Wharton. A three years' course of 
instruction was established, and an examination was required 
as a preliminary to a degree. Mr. Bennett was singularly 
well fitted to have the charge of such a school. He was a 
student in the law, an author and editor of law books, had been 
engaged in a large, varied and successful practice at the bar, 
and for many years had been a judge of probate and insol- 
vency in Massachusetts. It was impossible with him that in 
the teaching or the practice of law its ethical sources and 
obligations should not be fully considered. He had an 
extraordinary aptness and zeal in imparting his learning to 
pupils, and he had the faculty of interesting in the school 
as instructors some of the most prominent members of the 
Massachusetts bar. The school never has had a sufficient 
endowment in money to establish many permanent professor- 
ships, but it has had a large number of accomplished lawyers 
as lecturers upon topics with which they were especially 
familiar. The chronological lists of its graduates shows best 
the result. Its character as one of the best law schools in 
the country was soon established, and has ever since been 
maintained. 

Under the common law the decisions of the courts vary 
greatly in importance, not only by reason of the position the 
courts hold in the judicial system, but by reason of the learn- 
ing, experience and good sense of the judges, and of the scope 
of the jurisdiction which they exercise; and it is only by 
courts of last resort that the law is finally determined. It is 



6o Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



inevitable that in trial courts the- decisions sometimes must be 
hurriedly made, and after little instructive argument from the 
bar. It has been said that the decisions or judgments of 
courts must be taken as the ultimate facts out of which the 
science of law is to be constructed by a method of induction 
and deduction, such as is used in the natural sciences, but 
this is true only in a modified sense. These decisions are 
sometimes inconsistent with one another — which cannot 
happen with the facts of nature — and the decisions some- 
times are reversed or overruled. 

The administration of the law in this country and in 
England usually has been entrusted to men who have had a 
large knowledge of affairs. The successful administration 
and development of it demands not only a knowledge of affairs 
and an acquaintance with existing conceptions of right and 
expediency, but with the conceptions of other times and other 
countries. The experience and judgment of learned and able 
men for nearly two thousand years, as recorded in the judg- 
ments of courts and in law treatises, make up the contribution 
of mankind to the determination of those rights and duties 
which should be declared and enforced by the courts. The 
record is so vast that there is no end to the study of it. The 
mass of material has become so great that many parts of it 
can best be learned in schools established for the purpose, 
with ample libraries and a corps of instructors selected for 
the purpose of arranging, classifying and explaining the 
history and growth of any particular system of law and the 
reasons on which the courts have proceeded in the administra- 
tion of it. It is true, however, that many men have become 
good lawyers without the aid of much instruction beyond that 
derived from their own studies and practice, — and a working 
knowledge of legal procedure must be learned from practice. 

It has been considered in this Commonwealth that absolute 
independence is necessary to insure the best judicial work. I 
think that a great degree of independence is necessary to the 
career of a lawyer — independence, I mean, not only in the 



Address by the Hon. Walbridge A. Field. 6 1 

face of hostile public opinion or a hostile court, but indepen- 
dence toward clients. Almost the worst degradation of a 
lawyer is to become the mere servant of his clients. It is 
said that every man has the defect of his qualities, and every 
profession or pursuit has its characteristic virtues and vices. 
It is or should be a cardinal doctrine of the profession 
that lawyers should have no pecuniary interest in the suits 
which they prosecute or defend. Champerty in old times was 
particularly odious, and contingent fees and financial specula- 
tions in the futures of litigation, on the part of lawyers, ought 
everywhere to be discarded. Commercial habits in the 
administration of the law are the last thing that a lawyer 
should acquire. 

For many reasons the profession of law always has been 
overcrowded. It is not for the interest of the public that 
there be more lawyers than are needed for the transaction of 
legal business. What does concern the public is that the 
body of lawyers should be honest, learned, independent, wise 
efficient, and in every way trustworthy. The discipline 
exercised by the courts over the bar affords some security for 
this, but the public opinion of the bar is the best protection. 
Speaking only of Massachusetts, I think that in the last thirty 
years there has been a manifest improvement in the bar 
generally, in good manners, in morale, in fidelity to the court, 
and in the absence of sharp pactices as well as in professional 
learning. 

I believe that your Law School, in the twenty-five and more 
years of its existence, can fairly congratulate itself upon 
having distinctly done something to ensure these results. 

THE CHAIRMAN. 
"The Press, Secular and Religious," — few there be who 
would take such a theme and attempt to treat it, but we 
have one who reads all that one man can read, who remembers 
everything that is essential to be remembered, — the editor of 
The Christian Advocate, Rev. Dr. Buckley. 



62 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



REV. JAMES M. BUCKLEY, S. T. D., LL.D., 

Editor of The Christian Advocate. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — A citizen of 
Chicago, a minister of the gospel, concluded to take charge of 
a paper, and at the same time carried on the ministerial 
function, when invitation and convenience made it possible. 
On a warm summer evening, after walking two miles, he 
entered a church a few moments in advance of the time of 
beginning, and before the congregation had arrived, and sat 
down behind a pillar to rest and compose his thoughts. After 
a little while he heard a sound as of conversation in an adjacent 
room. The tones grew louder, and he discerned the voice of 
prayer, and as he listened he heard these words : " Bless Thy 
servant who is to preach to us tonight. We hear that he is 
an editor, and probably rusty, but we beseech Thee to touch 
his lips with a coal from off thine altar." From the lips of 
the ministerial editor I heard this confession, that he never 
more devoutly responded "Amen" than on that occasion. 
The Psalmist prayed that his tongue might be " like the pen 
of a ready writer," and on this occasion, burdened with the 
secular and religious press, I need all that my friend needed 
and all that the Psalmist prayed for. (Laughter.) 

There is a striking analogy between the growth of the 
power of the press and that of the common people. Two 
hundred years ago neither had much consideration or power. 
The first paper ever printed in the United States, of course 
originated in Boston. (Applause.) It appeared on the 
25th day of September, 1690, but as the Scotch say, " It died 
a-bornin'." There never was a second number, and it has 
always been spoken of as a pamphlet. But on the 24th of 
April, 1704, a paper that came to stay appeared here. It 
took a very humble name — The Boston News Letter. 
Seventy-two years after that, the year of the Declaration of 
Independence, there were but thirty-seven newspapers in the 
United States, or the territory covered by it. Benjamin 



Address by the Rev. James M. Buckley. 63 



Franklin had gone from here to Philadelphia and established 
The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729. Pennsylvania then had 
nine newspapers ; Massachusetts seven ; New York and Con- 
necticut each four ; South Carolina three ; Rhode Island, 
Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina each two ; and New 
Hampshire and Georgia each one. Very soon, however, after 
that period, the number and size of papers and their influence 
extended. Today the press competes with the pulpit as a 
teacher of morals ; with fashion as a regulator of manners ; 
with the courts of justice as a detector, exposer and punisher 
of crime ; and with seminaries, colleges and universities as an 
educator ; and it is through its advertising departments, the 
mainstay of commerce. It presumes to elect presidents, to 
declare war (applause and laughter), to command army and 
navy authorities and compel them to heed its dictum. 
(Laughter.) In a free government all things are united — 
literature, commerce, religion, politics, education, agriculture — 
everything that exists in a free government is related to 
everything else, and the press, therefore, has an unlimited 
sphere. And what an extraordinary thing it is ! 

One week after I took charge of a paper, I published some 
sentiments that I had often uttered without producing any 
particular impression, and they were received by some men 
as oracles. The editorial "we" is an "x" of unknown power 
in an equation that is never fully wrought out. The 
anonymousness of the writers delivers them from responsi- 
bility, and the united clamor for liberty of the press lifts them 
above the law of libel unless the person referred to was prior 
to the attack an object of general detestation. And then con- 
sider what a magic power there is in "these columns." "We 
have several times in these columns" stated something. 
(Laughter.) It is the equivalent of a modern throne of 
majesty ! 

When' we look at a paper — those who dare to do so — 
we discover that it consists of editorials, edited departments, 
contributions, current news, advertisements, and a marvellous 



64 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



collection that reminds one of the report of the first French 
Exposition upon the mince pie : " Two pieces of paste, the 
lower paste damp, and a heterogeneous mixture of doubtful 
digestibility between them." If we look at the press, we find 
the lowest stratum consists of the productions of men whom 
someone has described as "lost souls, dealing for money in 
everything that will inflame the worst passions of men." 
That stratum of the press is the friend, the advocate and 
defender of all who make a maintenance by some kind of 
villainy. That stratum of the press prefers to serve carrion 
rather than to set anything pure and sweet before the public. 
That stratum of the press rejoices in tearing to pieces a 
family previously respectable, and will gloat over the publi- 
cation of the names of collateral relatives, going backward 
to the tenth generation of any person who may be guilty or 
even accused of crime. 

Above this, far above it, is another stratum which unfortu- 
nately sometimes lapses into the lower, — a stratum that is a 
mixture of things that will not cleave, as Bacon said of the 
iron and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image, — they 
may cleave in a certain sense, but they will not incorporate. 
There the editorials are perfect. A man might follow them 
and live well and die pure, but all the rest is suspicious. On 
the editorial page things are condemned in an uncompromising 
way; in other parts of the paper they are advertised in an 
ingratiating way, and all the advertising columns are in the 
interests of the things advertised. Above that is the only 
stratum worthy of permanent respect, where the effort is to 
make a philanthropic, intellectual, instructive and entertaining 
paper, not blind enough to fancy that the ideal can be 
presented, but always aiming to make the ideal palatable. 
Who can describe what the press does for the public from this 
higher point of view ? Even the second stratum does more 
good than harm, for "the words of wise men are heard in 
quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools." 
Wise people will draw from those parts of the paper antidotes 
for the parts to be condemned. 



Address by the Rev. James M. Buckley. 65 



The press includes magazines as well as papers. Magazines 
are of vast importance and benefit to the people of this 
country. Many of them are now of the highest possible 
grade. Their average style, intellectually and rhetorically 
considered, is far above the popular novel, and far above many 
of the books addressed to the higher nature. The biography, 
which is given in the best form to the public in the great 
magazines, is so vast, and as a rule so well selected, that it 
is in itself an education to read them. One of these maga- 
zines has today $160,000 worth of manuscripts, piled up, 
constantly accumulating, so high is its standard, and so 
determined is it to compete successfully with its contempo- 
raries. Within a comparatively short period, a class of 
magazines has risen up, proposing to make their profits by 
advertisements. They sell their magazines for ten cents or 
less, and I am bound to say that some of these magazines are 
worthy competitors of the larger ones, though it is not true of 
the majority. It is to be regretted that the larger and more 
important magazines, in competing with those which have 
such a large circulation, have "dipped" in not a few instances 
within the last few years. I maintain that it is disreputable 
for a magazine or a public speaker, in or out of the pulpit, 
to " dip," to say or to print what could not be said or read to 
young ladies without making them blush, or young men 
without making them indignant ; and it must be confessed 
that some of these larger and better magazines have within 
a few years published stories which could not be read under 
the circumstances indicated. 

As for the religious press, it was necessary after the secular 
press came into power, because men attacked the principles 
of particular denominations in the secular press, and because 
the controlling spirits of the secular press had their own 
prejudices religiously considered. Of course an editor may 
be impartial. We have heard within a few moments that 
even the decisions of a judge depend upon the character, 
disposition, experience and prejudices of the man. 



66 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



There was a trial in this country some years ago, where 
Judge Pickering of New Hampshire was impeached for 
intoxication, and it was set up in his defence that he never 
got drunk as a judge, but as a man. The practical result of 
the decision was that when the man was drunk the judge was 
intoxicated, and under these circumstances an editor may 
have the highest and purest motives, but yet his prejudices 
will affect him. 

The oldest religious paper of importance in this country 
was founded in Boston — The Boston Recorder, in 1815. It 
is the predecessor of The Congregationalist, which, I believe, 
undertakes to date from the origin of The Recorder. There 
is a difference between women and papers, — papers endeavor 
to make themselves as old as possible. (Laughter.) The 
New York Observer was founded in 1823 to support 
Presbyterianism, and it supported it so well, and particularly 
the Calvinistic part thereof, as to make it necessary to 
establish in the same city, three or four years later, The 
Christian Advocate, to defend the principles of that growing 
communion against the charge of heresy. And the very same 
year that The Recorder declared war upon Arminianism in 
this city, to wit, the year 1823, Zion's Herald was established. 

Now the fact of the case is that a man may love peace, he 
may rejoice in his favorite beatitude, "Blessed are the peace 
makers," but if he is attacked, what shall he do ? I followed 
John Brown, who spoke in the old Tremont Temple many 
years ago, to the United States Hotel where we both stayed, 
after a somewhat incendiary address, in which he made state- 
ments which afterwards placed him in an unpleasant predica- 
ment. It was supposed that he was raising money on this 
tour for the purpose which finally brought him to his end. 
A member of the society of Friends followed him to the hotel 
to expostulate with him on the warlike tone of his speeches, 
and he said, " Friend, if a man was to thrust his hand into thy 
pocket, what wouldst thou do ? " " I would not strike him," 
replied the Friend, " I would seize his hand and hold him till 



Address by the Rev. James M. Buckley. 67 



the officers of the law came and took him into custody." 
"The only difference between us," said Ossawatomie Brown, 
" is the difference of the application of force." 

If a man is attacked he must defend himself. Consequently, 
the religious press was necessary, first, to protect the views 
of religious teachers against the secular press, and secondly 
against aggressive or unduly offensive sectarian discussion. 
It rapidly spread until today it is a very extraordinary factor 
in the country. It is not for me to "aggrandize my pro- 
fession," to make a quotation from Rasselas. Thurlow Weed 
said : " All I can say is that we can beat the religious press 
in any single issue, but in the long run they will undermine 
everything they unite against." That is all I have to say with 
reference to the religious press, except that it corrects the 
errors of the secular press with regard to religious creed and 
religious language. One of the secular papers once published 
the following : "The Rt. Rev. William H. Harris blessed the 
stone " at the laying of the foundation of a church in Newark. 
That is very good language, but not for us, and it behooves 
us, in the religious press, to correct the errors of the secular 
press with regard to religious terms. It is a duty that grows 
less and less strenuous, for almost every well conducted 
secular paper has what it calls the religious editor. It holds 
him responsible for accuracy as far as possible. And the 
relations which the secular and religious press sustain to each 
other with regard to giving and receiving information are such 
as some Christian denominations might emulate to their 
advantage. But I must not proceed further, or cease, without 
directing attention to the fact that New England has exerted 
a more powerful influence through the press in this country 
than it has exerted through seminaries, colleges, universities, 
or in any other possible way. Look at a few facts in proof 
of this assertion. A great many years ago, Jeremiah Evarts, 
the father of William M. Evarts, was editing a paper in 
Massachusetts. That fact caused William M. Evarts to 
exert a kind and amount of influence in the state of New 



68 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



York which upon his own word he never would have dreamed 
of exerting had it not been for his remembrance of the 
connection of his father with the press, — an influence that 
Horace Greeley was extremely thankful for to the day of his 
death. 

Note the fact that nearly every great paper out of New 
England was founded or conducted by New Englanders. 
The Tribune was founded by Horace Greeley of New Hamp- 
shire, a strange writer, but a strong one, the most powerful 
personality who ever wielded pen or pencil in this country. 
Robert Bonner at one time undertook to publish a collection 
of poems hitherto unpublished. Mr. Greeley heard that he 
intended to include in the publication a poem of his, and he 
wrote Bonner in the best style of the editor, a letter which 
Mr. Bonner afterwards published : " Mr. Bonner, I beg you, 
you must exclude me from your new 'Poetic Pantheon.' I 
have never wished or desired to be installed there. I never 
was a poet in expression, and never will be. I did in my 
callow days write verses, as I suppose nearly every person 
who can make intelligent pen marks has done, — but I never 
thought they were poetry. Within the last ten years I have 
been branded aristocrat, demigod, hypocrite, dissensionist, 
traitor, corruptionist, — but no man ever flung in my face my 
transgressions in rhyme. (Laughter.) Let the dead rest, and 
leave to me the reputation which I desire and am worthy of. 
I know poetry from prose, which the ruthless resurrection 
of my verses would seem to disprove, the reader blindly 
inferring that I supposed them poetry." Horace Greeley 
went out from New England. Let it not be forgotten also 
that The Journal of Commerce was founded by two New 
Englanders, — David Hale and Gerard Hallock. 

Charles A. Dana, the greatest editor except Greeley, who, 
as some one satirically has said, would have been perfect if 
not of such a sympathetic nature, was a New Hampshire man. 
Three of the four great editors, — Henry Ward Beecher, 
Richard S. Storrs and Joshua Leavitt, were all New 



Address by the Rev. James M. Buckley. 69 



Englanders. The Evangelist was founded by Leavitt, and for 
forty years Henry M. Field has conducted it. Henry Ward 
Beecher founded The Outlook, and Lyman Beecher is now 
the editor. That paper is a semi-religious paper which 
competes largely with The Independent. The New Orleans 
Picayune was founded by a man from New Hampshire, and 
the first paper on the Pacific coast was founded by Walter 
Colton, from Rutland, Vermont, an alumnus of Dartmouth ; 
and George Prentiss, also a New Englander, was editor of 
The Louisville Courier-Journal. 

With these facts before you, you will not consider the 
statement extravagant, when it is affirmed that New England 
has done more for the country in the evolution of civilization 
in this way than in any other single way. 

And now, Mr. President, the press, besides doing so much 
good, has done a great deal of harm, and is likely to do consid- 
erable more. I clipped from four different papers within a 
week the following items : "The President looks worried and 
troubled." "The President looks cheerful and thinks things 
are likely to go on well." "The President is incensed at 
the slowness of the war department." " The President is on 
perfectly amicable terms with Secretary Alger, and believes 
he is doing right." And now if there is no news, they tell what 
the news might be if we had it (applause and laughter), and 
if so what would follow; and if everything else fails, the 
attitude of the foreign nations brings grist to every mill. The 
secular papers are nearly all political papers, and if anyone 
does what I have to do — read nine daily papers — he will 
discover that it is impossible even to get the truth about Mr. 
Gladstone, or about the last work that is suspected of heresy. 
You can not get the truth about doctrines or anything else 
unless you read all the papers, dissolve them, and then 
sterilize the final results. (Laughter and applause.) 

As respects religion, I will only say that the press, while 
often a friend, is sometimes a foe to religion. It dis-cusses 
until the first syllable of the word is superfluous and full of 



70 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



evil results, so that the minister in the West who wanted to 
preach against the press did not go far astray when he 
took for his text : "And he sought to see Jesus, but could not 
for the Press." (Applause.) 

I rely, Mr. President, upon the University to send out men 
who will elevate the press. I said to Charles A. Dana once, 
at a meeting of the press in New York, " Will educated 
men serve the interests of the press well ? " He said, " No 
man can publish a daily paper well today without at least half 
a dozen college-bred men upon its staff." 

I did not arrive in time today to get a list of the men from 
this institution who have served upon the press. Next time, 
twenty-five years from now, if I am representing the press, 
I will have a full list, to show what your institution has 
done along this line. 

THE CHAIRMAN. 
In behalf of the authors of Boston, Rev. Edward Everett 
Hale will now address you. (Applause.) 

EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

It is certainly a great privilege to speak on this subject 
to this audience. It does not often happen to a man — it 
certainly never happened to me — to speak on literature to 
one, two or three thousand graduates of a university, men 
and women who have drunk at the well of English undefiled, 
and have been taught to drink carefully while they drank 
deeply of that well and of no other. 

I am going to bring before this jury — that is what it is — 
a question which has been proposed lately by the brilliant 
Pennsylvania historian, — who is not so well known in New 
England as he will be, and who is not, Dr. Buckley, known to 
the press at all, — I mean Mr. Sidney Fisher, one of our first 
historians. In his study of New England, and particularly of 
Massachusetts, he has put this rather curious question, which 
thus far the press of Boston has passed by wholly without 



Address by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale. 7 1 



answering : " What has become of the literature of Massa- 
chusetts ? " There certainly was a literature in Massachusetts, 
he says, five and twenty years ago, and the names are 
circulated of the poets — Bryant, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, 
and Longfellow, — pretty good names for us to conjure with. 
They are all dead, he says, and who take their places? And 
the names are circulated of historians — Palfrey, Prescott, 
Hildreth, Bancroft, Sparks, — certainly pretty good names to 
build up a reputation in literature. And what has become of 
them, and where are your historians now ? he asks. 

I don't propose to answer these questions. Dr. Eliot is to 
speak after me, and he will answer some of them, and the 
gentlemen of this University will be answering them in the 
next half century. But there is such a pleasure — I knew I 
was to have it when I came here — in speaking to the younger 
generation of people who have graduated in the last twenty- 
five years, on what literature is today and on the literature of 
the future, that I am glad to throw down this bone, upon 
which there is a good deal of meat, for the younger generation 
to gnaw. (Applause.) 

There is in this house — I do not happen to know him by 
sight, I wish I did — the successful merchant who is at this 
moment determining in what place and on what conditions he 
will place the $50,000 which he is going to give this University 
before he is four and twenty hours older. (Laughter and 
applause.) My suggestion to him is that he shall establish 
the Warren Scholarship. (Applause.) And this scholarship 
is to give some one young gentleman or lady a thousand 
dollars a year, for five years, for purposes of study in this 
country and in Europe, after receiving the degree of Bachelor 
of Arts, or Maid of Arts, here in this University. And these 
prizes are to be given to the persons who shall write the best 
essay in the English language, not to exceed two columns in 
length of The Advocate, and be judged by an impartial 
committee. And the first of these essays is to be on the 
question which Mr. Fisher has laid down : " What has become 



72 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



of the literature of Massachusetts ? " I don't propose myself 
to compete for the prize, and I don't propose to answer the 
question. I am only going to address myself to that part of 
this company who have already addressed me. Many more of 
them have addressed me than would address Dr. Warren, 
Dr. Gordon, Judge Field and Mr. Eliot, and the other gentle- 
men around me. They write letters to me as they used to 
write to dear Dr. Holmes, to ask "if literature is a good 
career, and would you advise me to go into literature as a 
career, or into Grub Street brokerage, or into editing news- 
papers, or into the bar, or into the pulpit ? " That is the sort of 
letters they will write you. And I propose to give the answer 
to that question. I had it put to me, oh, more than thirty 
years ago. I had a magazine article sent me when I was the 
editor of a magazine, and I sent it back again, as I did nine 
hundred and ninety-nine others in the course of the next six 
months, and I had a beseeching note from the author, saying, 
"Why did you send back my story ? " to which I directed my 
clerk to say that it was our business to make a good magazine, 
and not our business to instruct young authors. Then I 
received another letter saying, " That is true, but I am sick, I 
am lying in bed, I have no pleasure but writing these stories, 
and I wish I knew why none of them are printed." There, 
you see, it touched me on the tender side, and I wrote this 
answer : " In the first place you call yourself a man, and you 
are a woman. If I were a woman I would write with a 
woman's name and my own name. In the second place, you 
write on a subject of which you know nothing. I have met," 
said I, " in Godey's Magazine and in Graham's Magazine, 
with a great many mothers who insist on marrying their 
daughters to foreign counts, but I have lived to the age of fifty 
years, and in fact I never saw it done. That is your condition 
exactly. You say that you are lying in bed all the time. I 
believe that you never saw a foolish man who wanted to marry 
a real American girl to a foreign count, and unless you have 
seen it you have no right to write about it." 



Address by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale. 73 



These words I wrote, for my soul was all aflame. And it 
did good. It turned out the man was a man and he got well. 
The tonic of .my letter was as good for him as if it had been 
Moxie. It turned out that he went West. That is always 
a good thing to do, Mr. Buckley. I don't know what his 
business was, but he became and is a prominent man of 
letters in the valley of the Mississippi. I don't propose to tell 
you his name. What do you think was the secret of that 
man's success ? He never wrote on any subject after I wrote 
him that letter until he had informed himself on that subject 
as well as he could. He never wrote unless he had some- 
thing to say. He made an exception in that to all the writers 
for the daily press, and to almost every other writer in 
America, I may say, and thus he has attained the prominent 
position to which I have alluded. 

Now I know I am speaking in the presence of professors 
of the methods of literature, but those gentlemen will join 
me in the central statement : If you haven't anything to say 
you had better not learn how to say it. And the first step 
and the second step and the last step in the establishment of 
a literature in Massachusetts will be that the people who 
are to write are the people who have done something before 
they begin to write. The one author who is certain, and 
whose friends are certain, that his works will be read in the 
year 2198 is not the person generally named now among 
literary men. His name is Ulysses S. Grant. General Grant's 
English is well nigh matchless. His style in literature might 
be taken as a model, and the reason is that General Grant 
never wrote one word unless he had something to say. He 
did some great things and he had those great things to 
describe and he described them. 

I said I would not answer Mr. Fisher's question. I do not 
propose to do so. I do propose to say to the fathers and the 
mothers who are here, to the young men and the maidens who 
are here, to the people who are looking forward with a wish 
that they may succeed as Parkman has succeeded, as 



74 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



Higginson and Holmes succeeded, as Lowell succeeded — I 
will say that all those men, quite independent of the knack 
of writing, quite independent of the mastery of style, were 
men of knowledge, of conviction, of profound study, and 
of strong personal character. 

And if you ask me to compare the Massachusetts of the 
first half-century with the Massachusetts of the last half- 
century, I am apt to say that the leaders of Massachusetts, 
sixty, seventy, eighty years ago were the men who had done 
something. They had discovered the Columbia River, or 
traded for furs with Indians, or split ice off an iceberg in 
Labrador and sent it to Havana or Calcutta ; and the young 
men, — the Bryants, the Holmeses, the Palfreys, the Lowells — 
who grew up in a circle of men who could do something, 
are the men who made our literature. As I look round on 
leaders of society now, whose most prominent business is to 
unlock a safe in a safety deposit vault and cut off the coupons 
from their bonds and carry them to be cashed, those men do 
not compare in my mind favorably with the men who split 
the ice from the Labrador iceberg, or who discovered the 
Columbia river. And I am quite sure that just as fast and as 
far as Massachusetts and New England do anything that is 
worth doing, so fast and so far will Massachusetts and New 
England have a literature. (Applause.) 

THE CHAIRMAN. 

In behalf of the Church Universal, who is better prepared 
to speak than one who has held Conferences in every state 
and territory of the United States, and who has traversed the 
whole world, and seen religion in all forms ? I introduce to 
you Bishop Hurst, Chancellor of The American University. 

BISHOP HURST. 
Permit me to bring from the banks of the Potomac to the 
Boston University my hearty congratulations. It is not " all 
quiet" there at this time; on the contrary, it is very busy, 



Address by the Rev. Bishop J. F. Hurst. 75 



very intense ! We are thinking there of the Philippine Islands, 
and the new and large field for American ideas at the 
Antipodes. 

To whatever land one goes, from whatever shore he sails 
into still farther lands, under every sky, he finds the fair and 
the strong who have graduated from the Boston University. 
They are always Americans, always true to their pledges. 
What is one worth unless you can trust him, as Vermont 
can trust Dewey, around the world? (Applause.) 

We never think of Christianity as a thing of yesterday or 
of tomorrow only. It is the one eternal force in the world. 
An American on the platform of a railway in Southern India 
met a Brahmin, also waiting for the train. " You are an 
American," the Brahmin said, " and I am an Asiatic. You 
belong to a conquering faith, — I belong to a dying faith." 
Every ethnic faith, save Christianity, is on the road to the 
graveyard. Not one has the power of expansion. That 
means that the chill of death is coming. The so-called ethnic 
faiths are dying faiths, sorrowing sisters, clad in black, for 
whom there is no tomorrow. 

Why are all these hoary faiths doomed ? Because Chris- 
tianity is ever young, and is ever looking toward the future 
for a wider horizon and a larger career. Christianity has its 
incarnation in the church. Often the church takes the 
intense color and morbid temperament of the time or the 
land — the fever of its environment. It often loses its temper 
and gets quite astray from the calm and judicial. But we 
must remember that the church is not the perfect thing. 
It is human and has the frailties of its time. But it has 
always the rare gift of a splendid reserve power. Its great 
endowment is the force and the genius to correct its own 
errors. 

In all history there is not a more daring thing, one for 
which our vocabulary has really no name, than the heroism of 
a few citizens of a despised province of the Roman Empire, 
without contact with any of the schools, without even a 



j6 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



whisper from any great pagan teacher, daring to remodel the 
world's wisdom. So soon as the church was established 
these men looked out with complacency upon their own 
century and upon those to come, as if to say : " We have no 
fear of the future." The answer was thundered back to them, 
" Do, if you dare ! Look at our venerable universities. 
Behold our great schools of thought in Athens and North 
Africa. They have been growing there apace for four cen- 
turies." "Yes," replied the adventurous tramplers on the 
old proprieties, " those are very great schools, but they have 
served their day. The new world needs a new wisdom ! " 

Now, these men proceeded with the utmost deliberation to 
decide upon places for new schools, as if the old were 
antediluvian and deserved to be forgotten. They parcelled 
out their universe into four school districts, — Antioch on the 
farther east, Asia Minor westward, and in North Africa the 
two schools of Carthage and Alexandria. Then they and 
their successors sent, far and wide, their representatives to 
gather from the Christian folk students for their four great 
schools. And the schools grew. The old universities, no 
longer capable of retaining their hold upon mankind, passed 
away as the new developed. The blood of ten great persecu- 
tions nurtured all their roots. Nero knew how to slaughter 
Christians on the arena of the Colosseum. But that was his 
highest conquest. He never achieved a victory in the 
illimitable field of ideas. 

But what of the great leaders in those four schools of 
Christian thought ? Some were superstitious. Some were 
violent in temperament. Some were too fond of a theory to 
see the whole truth. Nevertheless, they were men who in 
great emergencies, and when the executioner was in sight, 
were as firm as God's very stars above them. They did not 
flinch. Some, like Athanasius, were sent up the Nile into 
exile. But often, like him, they came down again, to find the 
emperor dead who had ordered their banishment. Brave they 
were, and glowing incarnations of the beatitudes of Christ. 



Address by the Rev. Bishop J. F. Hurst. J 7 



Then there came a second birth of Christian education. 
That was the beginning of the mediaeval period. The mission 
before the church was the conquest of the unconverted and 
unchristianized tribes of central and northern Europe. They 
stretched into the east as far as Parthia, almost on the line of 
India, and westward to the straits of Gibraltar. Now who 
could classify their languages, sing their legends, gather up 
the loose threads of their history ? Charlemagne was the 
first cosmopolitan of the age. He sent over to England for 
Alcuin, and made him the master of his great Palatine school, 
from which emanated Eginhard and other scholars of the 
time. Longfellow tells the story of the attachment of this 
unsophisticated scholar, Eginhard, to Emma, the daughter of 
the great chieftain : 

" The Emperor, when he heard this good report 
Of Eginhard much buzzed about the court, 
Said to himself, ' This stripling seems to be 
Purposely sent into the world for me ; 
He shall become my scribe, and shall be schooled 
In all the arts whereby the world is ruled.' 
Thus did the gentle Eginhard attain 
To honor in the court of Charlemagne ; 
Became the sovereign's favorite, his right hand, 
So that his fame was great in all the land, 
And all men loved him for his modest grace 
And comeliness of figure and of face. 
An inmate of the palace, yet recluse, 
A man of books, yet sacred from abuse 
Among the armed knights with spur on heel, 
The tramp of horses and the clang of steel ; 
And as the Emperor promised he was schooled 
In all the arts by which the world is ruled. 
But the one art supreme, whose law is fate, 
The Emperor never dreamed of till too late." 

Now universities began to arise. Charlemagne carried the 
university around with him. When there was no fighting to 
be done, there was an immense amount of learning in the. 
Schola Palatina, or the attachment to his palace. 



y8 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



The establishment of the mediaeval schools of Paris, Padua 
and Ravenna followed, and by and by the great school of 
Prague was founded, which produced Jerome of Prague and 
the immortal Huss. The aspiration of the church for great 
schools was a controlling passion of the mediaeval period. 

By and by the breath of a new air was caught by the 
Germans. Then universities of a different grade sprang up, 
and from Byzantium on the east they spread to what is called 
the Pentapolis, on the eastern coast of Italy. Ravenna became 
a new Greece. Soon sprang up the humanism of the new 
morning, gleaning from the rich classic thought of all 
previous ages what was best and worthiest. Reuchlin, the 
first Humanist, appeared. Then came Schwarzerd, or 
Melanchthon (simply a translation of his own name into Greek). 
Martin Luther heard of him, and called him from editing little 
school-books, small editions from different authors, to Witten- 
berg, when he shared with Luther the throne of universal 
empire. 

All through the period from the beginning of the Reforma- 
tion down to the present time, the church, although with 
many errors, was the mother of universities, while on the 
other hand, the universities supplied the church with its 
strongest exponents and evangelists with tireless steps. 

It is quite the vogue with certain Don Quixotes to charge 
the church with being the protectress of ignorance. " Down 
with Science ; up with Darkness," is the cry they would put 
in the mouth of the church. On the contrary the church is 
not and never has been the opponent of science. I will 
admit the formidable appearance of the fine padding, called 
footnotes, in Buckle's " History of Civilization " and Draper's 
" Intellectual Development of Europe " and some other books, 
mainly made up of those two, where it is made to appear 
that in the time of Galileo the church took an opposite course. 
We forget that the persecutor of Galileo, and of others who 
ventured into new realms of thought, was only an adminis- 
trator. It was never the wish of the church. The clergy of 



Address by the Rev, Bishop J. F. Hurst. 79 



Monte Cassino were the best astronomers of Europe. The 
church itself has in no case been on the side of ignorance, 
but has always been on the side of the highest and broadest 
knowledge. 

Look at the picture here in Boston and at Plymouth ! 
When the Mayflower came over to these shores it was hard to 
tell how many authors sat studying and working in the little 
ship's company. The heroes of that voyage planted large 
influence for a great future and for the education of a 
continent. One of the first dreams, before the oldest of 
the Mayflower colonists had died, was for a great university, 
and well was it for Harvard that the eldest of the Pilgrim 
colonists were projectors of great schemes of education. 

All the other schools for higher education which were built 
up in the American colonies began with theology. In those 
early days the subjects dealt with in the schools were 
theological, and when Cotton Mather graduated at Harvard, 
his magnificent oration was on " The Divinity of Hebrew 
Points." Imagine such a subject today ! Who would listen 
to it now ? It is true that theology was at the foundation of 
all our colleges. Look down at the little William and Mary 
College, on the banks of the James river, planted by the 
Virginia colonists. The entire course of study was theology. 
It was the feeling of the colonists after the light in the 
darkness and blindness of the times. 

The same ecclesiastical trend is observable in the history 
of the various American colleges. Harvard, Yale, Princeton 
and Amherst were largely ecclesiastical and theological at the 
outset. Everywhere it was the love of the church for the 
university. That passion has been growing stronger and more 
intense from that time to the present. Hostility between the 
church and the university ! Never ! Nothing but an ever- 
lasting unity, a beautiful and sweet alliance ! 

In every great crisis, such as the Reformation in England, 
there has always been difficulty in enlisting the university. 
Hawthorne says that a woman is never so sweet and beautiful 



8o Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



as when she has passed through a great trial. So it may be 
said of Holland, she was never so sweet and beautiful, as when, 
having overcome the Duke of Alva, and thrown off forevermore 
the Spanish yoke, her first thought of freedom, her first cry of 
deliverance, her first note of thanksgiving was, " Let us build 
a university," and out of the starving people there sprang the 
University of Leyden. So across the channel the struggle of 
the English families for the succession brought to pass their 
universities. 

I will admit that Oxford was very different from Cambridge. 
Oxford did bring from the continent Peter Martyr, Ochino, 
and the celebrated Erasmus, strong and noble man ! But 
Cambridge did not want any foreigners. Cambridge was 
getting ready for New England. It was the hotbed of 
Puritanism, Leyden-men, Pilgrims, — its scholars driven from 
England, settling in Leyden, then coming over in the May- 
flower. And when Harvard was first established, it was 
young Cambridge from old Cambridge. Nearly all of its 
professors had been students in Cambridge halls. Out of 
Cambridge and the church came the Cambridge of this 
country, — both of them great and wonderful outgrowths of 
the highest aspiration. 

So I suggest for the future a fair motto for Boston 
University, for its coming twenty-five years : " The broadest 
Christian scholarship for all the years to come : scholarship 
with the word of God for its basis, but the widest scholarship, 
embracing all fields and fearing no results." 

The church universal of today owes Boston University 
such a debt of gratitude as it can never pay, except by laying 
down on its altars such generous gifts as will assure the 
development and enrichment of its present noble beginning 
for a progressive and enduring scholarship. May these first 
twenty-five years multiply into magnificent centuries, and 
may the Boston University of the future carry into all those 
centuries the rare inheritance of the spirit and genius of its 
first President. 



Address by President Charles W. Eliot. 



PRESIDENT ELIOT. 



I have received no special mandate to express to you the 
sentiments with which other colleges and universities partici- 
pate in this auspicious festival ; but I think I know how the 
older American institutions of the higher learning now look 
upon the birth and fortunate youth of a kindred institution, 
and that I can interpret to you some of the grounds of these 
elders' good wishes. 

Many American colleges have been founded under circum- 
stances which made manifest at the start strong antagonisms 
in theological or social opinions and practices between the 
pre-existing and the newer institutions; but no such antag- 
onisms or oppositions have been encountered by Boston 
University. The educated community has learned that the 
cause of all institutions of higher education is in reality a 
common cause, to be promoted by the hospitable greeting of 
new comers to the field, and by cordial cooperation between 
the different institutions which partially occupy that field. It 
has learned that the common cause is weakened by public 
strife between different colleges and universities, and even by 
covert attacks on one another's methods and policy. Not 
more than twenty-five years ago the habitual attitude of the 
New England colleges towards each other could be correctly 
described as an armed watchfulness, which naturally and 
easily passed over at not infrequent intervals into a state of 
active hostility. The denominational quality of the colleges 
and the severity of denominational antagonisms led to bitter 
criticism each of the other, which was all the worse in its 
effects because conscientious and founded on serious convic- 
tions. Gradually this state of suppressed warfare between 
colleges has passed away with the denominational intensity 
which was its principal cause. 

It may be asked, however, Can existing colleges and univer- 
sities really welcome with sincerity a new college or university 
to the limited field of the higher education ? They can, and 



Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



they do; though of course the creation of new institutions 
might in a given community be carried too far. To determine 
beforehand this limit of fruitful creation requires, it must be 
confessed, a wisdom at once cautious and sanguine. In organ- 
izing education the bold experiment often succeeds, where a 
timid one would have failed. For example, one would not 
have supposed that three medical schools, each connected with 
a college or university, could be successfully carried on in 
Boston ; and yet three such schools are in full career, each 
renders a valuable service to the community, and because 
these diverse institutions exist here, Boston is a more influen- 
tial medical center than it would be if there were but one 
medical school instead of three. 

It often happens that institutions of education carried on by 
different bodies of trustees, and varying in regard to age, con- 
stitution, and methods, bring about in the community a greater 
diffusion of the higher education than would otherwise be 
accomplished. This kind of public service Boston University 
has illustrated during the first twenty-five years of its life, 
although established, or rather because established, in close 
proximity to Harvard, Tufts, and the Institute of Technology. 

The founding and development of Boston University is due 
in the first instance to the Methodist Episcopal Church — a 
great denomination in our country as regards numbers, wealth, 
and general effectiveness. The brief history of the Univer- 
sity demonstrates the extraordinary change which has taken 
place in the real management of institutions of denominational 
origin. For more than a century in the early history of Har- 
vard College every person connected with the institution as 
governor or teacher had to be connected with what was then 
the Established Church of Massachusetts. That a single 
Baptist should be a teacher in Harvard was an intolerable 
scandal. In the Roman Catholic colleges of today every 
governor and teacher must be a member of that communion ; 
but in the colleges of the large Protestant denominations 
denominational management no longer means necessarily this 



Address by President Charles W. Eliot. 83 



invariable consignment of the students to teachers connected 
with one denomination. On the catalogues of Boston 
University are found the names of teachers and administrative 
officers belonging to a great variety of denominations ; and I 
need not say that students of every possible mode of religious 
thought have always been welcomed to its halls. A great 
gain in religious toleration is recorded in this striking change 
in the management of Protestant denominational institutions 
of the higher education. 

I must further felicitate Boston University on the reflex 
influence which an establishment of the higher learning, so 
conducted, has on the denomination which gave it birth. 
Although the founders of Methodism were men of thorough 
education, it came about in process of time that the denomi- 
nation attached less importance to learning in its ministers 
and teachers than to other qualifications. Nevertheless the 
foundations of this University were laid on a pre-existing 
theological school, where men were trained for the ministry 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church by inducting them into 
the various knowledges on which sociology, theology and 
sacred oratory depend. When out of this theological school 
there arose schools of all sciences and all professions, a great 
denomination, which had especially addressed itself to the 
humble and the uneducated, claimed a place among the 
promoters of the profoundest and loftiest learning. It put 
itself on a level with the other great Protestant denomina- 
tions, like the Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian, as 
advocate and promoter of sound knowledge as the firm 
basis of sound faith and practice. 

It is a touching and inspiring fact that many of the most 
important benefactors of Boston University have been men 
and women who themselves received but scanty education. 
To such men all our endowed institutions of learning have 
been indebted ; but in the older institutions it is natural that 
their grateful sons should claim the first place in contributing 
to their maintenance and enlargement. Thus at Harvard 



84 Boston University Quarter Centennial. 



University during the past thirty years, which has been a 
period of considerable enlargement, the gifts of graduates of 
the University somewhat exceed in amount the gifts of non- 
graduates of the institution. But in a new institution like 
Boston University an analogous support from its own 
graduates cannot be expected until thirty or forty years have 
elapsed since its birth. It should always be remembered that 
in its earliest years it owed much to men who never knew by 
personal experience how a thorough training in youth may 
enlarge and enrich the whole life of the recipient. In the 
faith and hope of such men there is something pathetic as 
well as inspiring. All institutions of learning must sympa- 
thize with their beneficent generosity, and must desire to 
make it fruitful and lasting. 

As the older institutions for whom I speak contemplate the 
growth already attained by this young ally, they marvel at 
the contrast between their own slow and painful development 
and the rapid progress of this University. In two hundred 
years Harvard did not reach the stature which Boston 
University has reached in twenty-five. The contrast teaches 
that institutions of education, like individuals, in great part 
derive their resources, powers, and characters from the 
society to which they belong, and share the fortunes of that 
society. Therefore, in wishing increasing health, wealth, and 
influence to Boston University, we are also expressing the 
pious wish and expectation that Boston and New England 
continue to develop all the material and spiritual elements 
which make people robust, rich, and righteous. 



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